A POLITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON RODRIGO ROA
DUTERTE’S DRUG WAR POLICY
THESIS
Nur Utari
NIM 13320054
ENGLISH LETTERS DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
UIN MAULANA MALIK IBRAHIM MALANG
2017
A POLITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON RODRIGO ROA
DUTERTE’S DRUG WAR POLICY
THESIS
Nur Utari
NIM 13320054
Advisor:
Zainur Rofiq, M.A.
ENGLISH LETTERS DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
UIN MAULANA MALIK IBRAHIM MALANG
2017
i
STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICITY
The undersigned,
Name : Nur Utari
ID : 13320054
Department : English Letters
Faculty : Humanities
declared that this thesis she wrote to fulfill the requirement for the degree of Sarjana
Sastra (S.S) in Department of English Letters, Faculty of Humanities, UIN Maulana Malik
Ibrahim Malang entitled A Political Discourse Analysis on Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s Drug
War Policy truly her original work. It does not incorporate any materials previously written
or published by another person, except those indicated in quotation and bibliography. Due to
this fact, she is the only person responsible for the thesis if there is any objection or claim
from others.
Malang, November 22, 2017
Nur Utari
ii
APPROVAL SHEET
This is to certify that Nur Utari‟s thesis entitled A Political Discourse Analysis on
Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s Drug War Policy has been approved by the thesis advisor to be
examined.
Malang, November 22, 2017
Acknowledgement by the Head of
English Letters Department,
Rina Sari, M. Pd.
NIP 19750610 200604 2 002
Approved by,
The Advisor,
Zainur Rofiq, M.A.
The Dean of
Faculty of Humanities
Dra. Hj. Syafiyah, M.A.
NIP 19660910 199103 2 002
iii
LEGITIMATION SHEET
This is to certify that Nur Utari‟s thesis entitled A Political Discourse Analysis on
Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s Drug War Policy has been approved by the Board of Examiners as
one of the requirement for the Degree Sarjana Sastra (S.S) in English Letters Department,
Faculty of Humanities, UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang.
The Board of Examiners Signatures
1. Vita Nur Santi, M.Pd. (Main Examiner)
NIP 19830619 201101 2 008
2. Rina Sari, M.Pd. (Chair)
NIP 19750610 200604 2 002
3. Zainur Rofiq, M.A. (Advisor)
Malang, November 22, 2017
Acknowledged by
The Dean of Faculty of Humanities
UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang
Dra. Hj. Syafiyah, M.A.
NIP 19660910 199103 2 002
iv
MOTTO
The first and most important step forward success is the feeling that we can succeed.
(Nelson Boswell)
v
DEDICATION
This thesis is honorably dedicated to my father (Taib Ahmad), my mother (Wartin),
my sister (Arumdani), my brother (Tiwa Alpapuansyah), and my best friend (Ilma Indana)
who always support me no matter how difficult my problems are, and give me a lot of
beneficial advice.
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I express my gratitude to the Lord of the universe, Allah SWT, for his blessing and
mercy so that I can accomplish my thesis entitled A Political Discourse Analysis on
Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s Drug War Policy as the requirement for the degree of Sarjana
Sastra (S.S), and for the Prophet Muhammad SAW who always becomes a guide for me to be
a better person.
I would never have been able to complete my study without the immeasurable support
and love of my family, especially to my father and mother who never give up their hopes to
me even though sometimes I feel so depressed to continue my hard ways. I also want to
express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Zainur Rofiq, M.A., who has guided me patiently
and given me tremendous ideas so that I can solve my confusions related to my analysis well.
Lastly, I want to send my sincere thanks to my best friend, Ilma Indana and Isnaini
Nugraning Wiranti who always support me since we get closer each other. They cheer me up,
and give me a lot of beneficial advice.
vii
ABSTRACT
Utari, Nur. 2017. A Political Discourse Analysis on Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s Drug War
Policy. Theses. English Letters Department. Faculty of Humanities. UIN Maulana
Malik Ibrahim Malang. Advisor : Zainur Rofiq, M.A.
Keywords : Political discourse analysis, Microstructures, Representation.
This research is intended to analyze and to describe how Rodrigo is represented in the
BBC News coverage related to his policy of war on drugs. The researcher employs
microstructures analysis in covering the using of the journalist‟s writing strategy such as
choice of words which is forming either bad or good representation of Rodrigo.
The researcher utilized two kinds of data, BBC News articles of Rodrigo‟s drug war
and Rodrigo‟s interview with Aljazeera. Those data denoted how the BBC journalist applied
his or her knowledge about Rodrigo to create Rodrigo representation in the society, and how
Rodrigo defended himself by sending official clarification related to his controversial policy
of war on drug. Due to the fact that Aljazeera do not provide the transcript of the interview,
the researcher transcribes it by herself.
This research uses descriptive qualitative method. The key instrument of this research
is the researcher herself. The data are analyzed by considering the way the journalist
expresses his or her knowledge about Rodrigo and his policy and the way Rodrigo clarifies
his representation in the society.
The finding reveal that Rodrigo inclines to be drawn in bad representation because the
journalist continually represents most of Rodrigo‟s bad sides which may automatically
emerge a kind of imputing thinking of the human rights disorder to Rodrigo and his policy of
war on drug. For instance, the way the journalist always denotes the number of death toll in
drug operation since it was run on July, 2016 will appear people‟ judgment to Rodrigo‟s
contradictory policy which has killed more than 7.000 in less than one year of his leadership
as a president of Philippines. Although Rodrigo has clarified the reasons of his action but
extrajudicial killings, unlawful killings, and contravening the law of humanity are becoming a
starting point to the journalist to form Rodrigo‟s bad representation.
The researcher suggests for the next researchers who are interested in doing research
in the same field might be able to wrap their theses in more complete, critical and valid
analysis, so that the readers will figure a new interesting side out in political discourse
analysis.
viii
ABSTRAK
Utari, Nur. 2017. Analisis Wacana Politik tentang Kebijakan Rodrigo Roa Duterte mengenai
perang terhadap narkoba. Tesis. Departemen Sastra Inggris. Fakultas Ilmu Budaya. UIN
Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang. Penasihat: Zainur Rofiq, M.A.
Kata kunci: Analisis Wacana Politik, Struktur Mikro, Representasi.
Penelitian ini dimaksudkan untuk menganalisis dan menggambarkan bagaimana
Rodrigo ditampilkan dalam pemberitaan BBC News terkait kebijakan perang terhadap
narkoba. Peneliti menggunakan analisis mikrostruktur dalam mendeskripsikan penggunaan
strategi penulisan jurnalis seperti pilihan kata-kata yang membentuk representasi Rodrigo,
baik berupa representasi buruk atau baik.
Peneliti menggunakan dua jenis data, artikel BBC News tentang perang terhadap
narkoba Rodrigo dan wawancara Rodrigo dengan Aljazeera. Data tersebut menunjukkan
bagaimana wartawan BBC menerapkan pengetahuannya tentang Rodrigo untuk menciptakan
representasi Rodrigo di masyarakat, dan bagaimana Rodrigo membela dirinya sendiri dengan
memberikan klarifikasi resmi terkait kebijakan kontroversialnya mengenai perang terhadap
narkoba. Karena kenyataan bahwa Aljazeera tidak menyediakan transkrip wawancara,
peneliti mentranskripsikannya sendiri wawancara tersebut.
Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Instrumen utama penelitian
ini adalah peneliti sendiri. Data dianalisis dengan mempertimbangkan bagaimana jurnalis
tersebut mengungkapkan pengetahuannya tentang Rodrigo dan kebijakannya dan cara
Rodrigo mengklarifikasi representasinya di masyarakat.
Temuan tersebut mengungkapkan bahwa Rodrigo cenderung direpresentasikan buruk
oleh BBC News.com karena wartawan tersebut secara terus-menerus menampilkan sebagian
besar sisi buruk Rodrigo yang mana hal tersebut cara otomatis dapat menimbulkan semacam
pemikiran yang menyimpang dari gangguan hak asasi manusia terhadap Rodrigo dan
kebijakan perang terhadap narkoba. Misalnya, cara jurnalis selalu menunjukkan jumlah
korban tewas dalam operasi narkoba sejak dijalankan pada bulan Juli 2016 akan
memunculkan penilaian orang terhadap kebijakan kontroversial Rodrigo yang telah
membunuh lebih dari 7.000 dalam waktu kurang dari satu tahun kepemimpinannya sebagai
presiden Filipina Meskipun Rodrigo telah mengklarifikasi alasan tindakannya, namun
pembunuhan diluar hukum, pembunuhan yang dilakukan secara illegal, dan pelanggaran
hukum kemanusiaan menjadi titik awal jurnalis untuk membentuk representasi buruk
Rodrigo.
Peneliti menyarankan agar peneliti selanjutnya yang tertarik untuk melakukan
penelitian di bidang yang sama mungkin bisa mempresentasikan tesis mereka dengan analisis
yang lebih lengkap, kritis dan valid, sehingga pembaca akan menemukan sisi menarik baru
dalam analisis wacana politik.
ix
مستلخص البحث
. تحليل الخطاب السياسي باالسياسة رودريجو روا دوتيرت عن حرب المخدرات. البحث الجامعي. قسم اللغة 7102أوتاري، نور. ير.الماجستالإنجيليزية وآدبها. كلية علوم الإنسانية والثقافة. جامعة مولانا مالك إبراهيم الإسلامية الحكومية بمالانق. المشرف: زين الرازقين
تحليل الخطاب السياسي، الذيكل الصغنً، التمثيل الكلمة الرئيسية:
في الأخبار الذي يرتبط السياسة Rodrigo Roa Duterteيقصد هذا البحث هو تحليل و تصوير كيف عرض رودريجو روا دوتنًت و في اختيار الكلمات الي تككل ومثثيل رودريجو روا الحرب الدخدرات. استخدمت الباحثة عن تحليل الذيكل الصغنً في الإستراتيجية للكتابة، نح
دوتنًت، إما مثثيل الحسن ومثثيل السيئة.
عن حرب الدخدرات رودريجو روا دوتنًت و الدقابلة رودريجو BBC Newsاستخدم الباحثة نوعان من البيانات البحثها يعني بمقالة يطبيق الدعرفة عن رودريجو لظهرت مثثيل رودريجو في المجتمع، وكيف الدفاع BBC Newsبالجزيرة. أما هذا البيانات تدل على كيف الصحفينٌ
الدذكورة، وبذلك النفسه رودريجو بيعطي التصنيفية الرسمية عن السياسة الخلافي عن الحرب الدخدرات. و بالحقيق، لا تقدم الجزيرة الدقالة الدقابلة الي الباحثة النفسي كتبتها في الدقالة.
دم هذا البحث بطريقة بحث الوصفي والكيفي. ولآلة البحث الرئيسة الي تطبيقت الباحثة هنا يعني بالدلاحظ النفسي. والبيانات استخ التحليل من هذا البحث هو نظر في كيفية الصحافّي يعبّّ الدعرفة عن رودريجو و كيفية مثثيل في المجتمع.
عن الصحافينٌ ظهرت من بعض جوانب السلبية من BBC News.comيئة عند هذا مكتكف يعبّّ أن يميل رودريجو على صفة الساتيجية رودريجو الذي يولّد الأفكار الدنحرفة من الاضطرابات الحقوق الإنسان على رودريجو حولى السياسة الدخدرات، على سبيل الدثال يعني استر
م، ظهر القيم من الأشخاص الأخرى عن السياسة الخلافات 6102لية عام الصحافّي يدل على عدد خسائر الدات في جراحية الدخدرات في شهر يو أشخاص في سنة واحدة حينما يكون رئيسة الجمهورية في بلد الفلبنٌ، ولو كان قد أضح رودريجو عن ما 0111عند رودريجو الذي قتل أكثر من
ن الإنسانية يكون مصدر للصحافي أن يعبّ صفة السيئة رودريجو.عمل في الداضي لكن قتل خارج القانون و القتل غنً الدكروع و انتهاك قانو
أما هذا البحث ينصح للبحوث التالية يهتمّ أن يعمل البحث في لرال النفسي، و يستطيع ليعبّ البحث الجامعي في تحليل الجيد في تحليل الخطابات السياسة. والصلاحي وتحليل العميق. و أمثنى الباحثة من هذا البحث ليكون القارئ يكتكف لرال الجديد
x
TABLE OF CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICITY …………..……………………………………........i
APPROVAL SHEET ……………….……………………………………………………...ii
LEGITIMATION SHEET ………………...………………………………………………iii
MOTTO ……………………………………………………………………………………..iv
DEDICATION ………………………………………………….…………………………..v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ………………………………………………..…………..…..vi
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………………vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………………………x
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………….……1
1.1 Background of the Study ………………………………………………………………1
1.2 Research Questions …………………………………………………………………….6
1.3 Objectives of the Study …………...…………………………………………………...6
1.4 Scope and Limitation …………………………………………………………….…….6
1.5 Significances of the Study …………...………………………………………………...7
1.6 Research Method ……………………………………………………………………...7
1.6.1 Research Design .......……………………………………………………………8
1.6.2 Data Sources …………………………………………………………………….8
1.6.3 Data Collection ………………………………………………………………….9
1.6.4 Data Analysis …………………………………………………………………..10
1.7 Definition of the Key Terms …………..……………………………………………...10
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ………………………………12
2.1 Political Discourse Analysis …………………………………………………………12
2.1.1 Political Cognition ……………………………………………………………..16
2.1.1.1 Knowledge …………………………….……………………………...…..19
2.1.1.2 Opinions and Attitudes …………………………………………….…..…20
2.1.1.3 Ideologies …………………………………………………………………21
2.1.1.4 Political Cognition: Concluding Remarks ………………………………...21
2.2 Teun A. Van Dijk‟s Model of CDA ……………………………………………….....23
2.2.1 Microstructures ……………………………………………………………...…23
2.2.1.1 Semantic …………………………………………………………………..24
2.2.1.2 Syntaxes ………………………………………..........................................25
2.2.1.3 Stylistic …………………………………………………………………....25
2.2.1.4 Rhetoric ………………………………………………………….……..…26
2.3 Role of Media ………………………………………………………………………...26
2.4 Previous Studies...……………………………...……………………………….……..28
xi
CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION……………………………………….31
3.1 Findings ………………………………………………………..……………….....31
3.1.1 Semantic Microstructures Analysis ………………..………………………….32
3.1.1.1 Exclusion …...……………………..……………………………………..…..32
3.1.1.1.1 Passivation ……………………………………………………….……32
3.1.1.1.2 Nominalization ………………………………………………………..43
3.1.1.2 Inclusion ………………………………….…………………………………44
3.1.1.2.1 Abstraction ……………………………………………………………44
3.1.1.2.2 Categorization ……………………………………..………….………47
3.1.1.2.3 Determination ……………………………………………..………….48
3.1.1.2.4 Objectivity ………………………………………………………..…..49
3.1.1.2.5 Association ………………………………….………………………..50
3.1.1.3 Transitive ……………………………….....…………….………………….51
3.1.1.4 Intransitive …………………………..……...………………….…………...54
3.1.1.5 Disclaimer ………………………..…………..………………………..…....56
3.1.1.6 Number of Game ……………...………………..………..………………….56
3.1.1.7 Metaphor ………………...………….…………..…………………………..58
3.1.1.8 Grafic …………..……………….………….…………..…………………....59
3.2 Discussion ……………………….…………….……………….….………….71
CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION ……………………………77
4.1 Conclusion ……………………………………………………….……………….77
4.2 Suggestion …………………………………….………………………………….78
BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………….……………………………..80
APPENDIX ………………………………………………………………………….82
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This chapter pervades the elaboration on background of the study, research questions,
objectives of the study, scope and limitation, significances of the study, research method and
definition of the key terms.
1.1 Background of the Study
Language, in simple term, is a human beings‟ tool of communication. Human beings
need language to express themselves, to communicate with others, to know everything in the
world, et cetera. Relying on Aristotle‟s view, Aristotle conveys that human language is a kind
of man-made arbitrary symbol in which the meaning of this symbol is not from the voice
itself, but established by convention among human beings. Barker (2004, p. 106) stated that
“language is important to an understanding of culture for two central and related reasons:
first, language is the privileged medium in which cultural meanings are formed and
communicated; and second, language is the primary means and medium through which we
form knowledge about ourselves and the social world”.
Due to the fact that language is an inseparable thing of humans‟ social life, many
researchers examine the gist of language especially when it is used in a lot of kinds of
scientific issues. To further the analysis of a particular discourse, some pioneers in the field
present critical paradigm called critical discourse analysis in order to make reader or
researcher more critical in analyzing and describing a particular issue. Critical discourse
analysis is a study that address to social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted,
reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context (Van Dijk, 2001).
The term “critical” in CDA can be interpreted as an attempt to describe, interpret, and
explain the relationship between the form and the function of language (Rogers, 2004). The
aims of critical discourse analysis itself in Foucault‟s view are to examine the discursive
2
formations that are produced in a text, the discursive strategies that are associated and the
effect of discourse production (Eriyanto, 2001). On the contrary with another approaches in
discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis does not principally propose to contribute to a
specific discipline, paradigm, school or discourse theory. Nonetheless, it is primarily
fascinated and motivated by pressing social issues, which aspires to better understand through
discourse analysis.
Moreover, critical discourse analysis also requires concentrating on the discursive
strategies that legitimize control, or otherwise naturalize the social order, and especially
inequality (Fairclough, 1985). To get an understanding of critical discourse analysis, we
should understand the nature of social power and dominance because those are the imperative
presupposition of critical discourse analysis. Power, especially the social power of groups or
institutions is the central notion in most critical work on discourse (Van Dijk, 2001). When
we talk about power, it means that we indirectly talk about control. Power, in term of control
over public discourse and communication, is an important “symbolic” resource, as is the case
for knowledge and information (van Dijk, 1996). In the social power groups or institutions,
people will have more or less power if they are able to control the acts and minds of members
of other groups. On the other hand, members of more powerful social groups and institutions,
especially their leaders, have more or less limited access to manage one or more types of
public discourse (Van Dijk, 2001). Therefore, those groups who control most influential
discourse also have more chances to control the minds and actions of others.
Power is a central concept in critical discourse analysis (Rogers, 2011). In doing
research in critical discourse analysis, we will deal with any aspect of power, domination, and
social inequality that exist in political and social sphere. Political discourse, for instance, is
another area of discourse analysis that pervades a broad range of subject matter and
delineates on a wide range of analytic method (Wilson, 2001). Based on Van Dijk‟s
3
explanation in his article of what is political discourse analysis, he asserts that political
discourse analysis deals with the reproduction of political power, power abuse or domination.
Further, political discourse deals with the discursive conditions and consequences of social
and political inequality those results from such domination (Fairclough 1995; van Dijk
1993b). This approach appeals me to be critical in employing this research by taking Rodrigo
Duterte as the subject of this research which has more power in dominating people.
The terms of power and domination, then, can be analyzed and described deeply not
only with critical discourse analysis and political discourse, but also micro level of analysis.
Micro level analysis or microstructures analysis describe about local meaning of a text which
can be analyzed by observing both the choosing and the using of words in a text used to
convey a particular meaning on the journalist‟s minds. Therefore, microanalysis also can be
used to analyze the meaning that the journalist desires to emphasize, so that we may know the
reasons of journalist in applying a particular word or phrase in transferring his or her opinion
about an event.
This research, then, investigates and describes the policy of Philippines‟ President,
Rodrigo Duterte, about drug war presented in BBC News coverage and Duterte‟s interview
with Aljazeera by using microstructures analysis. Drug war is a political term he made to
insist his decline to drugs by ceasing any kinds of drugs access in Philippines. He maintains
the policy in order to extirpate the circulation of drugs which have destroyed people life
entire the world. The main reason to select Rodrigo‟s policy is twofold: first, it emerges a
controversial result in the society so that the media, especially BBC News, can take an
enormous benefit by creating their own power to form Rodrigo‟s representation which might
bolster Rodrigo and his hard policy, vice versa. Second, the existence of power practice in
Rodrigo‟s policy might appear certain thoughts in the readers‟ minds so that there will be
4
such a fight of discourse that will lead people to a particular way of thinking either they will
judge Rodrigo in a good or a bad way.
Since he became Philippines‟ president on June 30, 2016, police had killed more than
seven thousand drug suspects in drugs operations. Consequently, Duterte‟s policy derives a
lot of protests from citizens, whom are not belong to his supporter, and some office-holder
such as Barack Obama for that is considered as human rights contravention. However,
Duterte still remains his policy of drug war. As we can see, Duterte employs his power to
dominate the others. The term of power is defined here as an action that limits the others to
achieve his or her particular goals. Therefore, the significance of this research is to provide
wide insights of the politico-linguistic representation that is observable on Duterte‟s news
coverage.
Some studies on political discourse analysis have been done by a number of people
for academic purposes, such as Moustafa‟s research (2015) entitled „Linguistic gender
identity construction in political discourse. A corpus-assisted analysis of the primary
speeches of Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton‟. The researcher found that both Obama and
Hillary have different interest in political affairs so that it establish their political identities
and gender identities, for instance, Obama tends to be more focus on foreign policy, whereas
Clinton inclines her concern on domestic policy. Another example, Obama inclines to be
focus on racial, ethnical and religious issues, yet Clinton herself only put more attention to
women‟s issues. Hence, the researcher discovered that either Obama or Clinton comes to
different notions of gender-related functionalizing words of profession, male fitness and
gender representations depend on the way the use language to convey people and the topical
interest they have.
Susanto (2014), on his entitle „a critical discourse analysis of power domination on
Barack Obama‟s speech about military action to Syria‟. He founded that Obama uses his
5
power as a president of America because of twofold; (1) to dominate and control the other
power. (2) to gain legitimacy from the International community on his policy to take military
action Syria. Then, to eliminate several obstacles and opposition of his policy, Obama used
his power domination to handle that issue. To show Obama‟s power domination, he uses
some strategies such as defining situation, number game, evidentially, hyperbole, self-
positive representative, negative other representation, consensus, empathy, national self-
glorification, and polarization; us and them dichotomy.
There are also some studies have been done in micro level of analysis such as
Ningrum (2014), entitle „inclusion strategies in The Jakarta Post crime news on the women
issues‟. In her analysis, she described that the journalist tended to advocate women as the
victims by using some strategies such as genericisation, specification, assimilation,
indetermination, determination, nomination, categorization (functionalization and
identification), personalization, and objectification. Moreover, The Jakarta Post‟s journalist
also inclines to relate the women‟s part of life such as family in order to attract the readers‟
interest for that may stimulate the readers‟ concern to the victims. Thus, the using of
inclusion strategies in The Jakarta Post is intentionally applied to reveal another fact of the
victims so that it may assist the journalist to advocate the women who are often marginalized
in the news coverage.
Fitrianingsih (2015), entitle „semantic change in the official words on Facebook‟. She
found that there were some semantic change in official words on Facebook such as metaphor,
metonymy, and generalization. Semantic change itself happened because there were many
motivations involved semantic change such as historical causes, psychological causes,
language-internal and social causes used by Facebook inventor. Thus, she concluded that
Facebooker may become easier in applying Facebook because of those factors in semantic
change.
6
The present research, therefore, in short term, is quite related to Susanto (2014) and
Moustafa (2015) in examining the existence of power and domination in political contexts,
although the present researcher has different subject, object, and media with them. The
present researcher employs Rodrigo Roa Duterte as a new Philippines president coming with
his controversial policy of war on drugs which has paralyzed the drugs users and dealers in
execution of killings. BBC News.com also has an important role in this research, then. In
addition, she also analyzes the local meaning such what Ningrum (2014) & Fitrianingsih
(2015) have done and the representation of the subject in the news coverage. Another thing
that make this study is different from the previous ones is the researcher desires to not only
provide the way BBC‟s journalist create Rodrigo‟s representation, but also the way Rodrigo
defense himself officially to clear off his bad report in media coverage.
1.2 Research Questions
This research is aimed to answer the following questions:
1. What are semantic microstructures that tend to be associated with Duterte‟s drug war
policy?
2. How is the representation of Duterte in the media coverage related to his policy of
drug war?
1.3 Objectives of the Study
In relation to the problem aforementioned, the objectives of this study are as follows:
1. To find out semantic microstructures on Duterte‟s drug war policy.
2. To describe the representation of Duterte in the media coverage.
1.4 Scope and Limitation
This study focuses on Political Discouse Analysis (PDA) proposed by Paul Chilton
which describes about the existances of political power, power abuse or domination in the
political contexts. To make this reseach manageable and avoid broading discussion, it has
7
limitation. It is limited to describe political power and domination in Rodrigo Duterte‟s
speech of drug war policy coverage by BBC News. To get reliable and actual data, the
researcher select some articles of Duterte‟s drug war policy that have been published by BBC
News for a few months since he was inaugurated as the new president of Philippines on June
30, 2016. The selected articles were published since June 30, 2016 till February 01, 2017.
The researcher, then, utilized online BBC News to make the data more credible. Furthermore,
the researcher investigates the way journalists represent Rodrigo in the media coverage,
either they incline to be neutral, marginalize, or get rid of a/some groups.
1.5 Significances of the Study
The significances of this research cover both theoretically and practically
contributions. The findings of this research are theoretically expected to give contribution to
the development of science, especially in the areas of linguistics such as in the field of
political discourse analysis developed by Paul Chilton theory and Van Dijk regarding the
theory of microstructures.
Practically, the researcher hopes that the result of this research can give contribution
not only to the next researcher, but also to English Letters Department students. The
researcher believes that English Letters Department student may have understanding about
how to analyze and to describe a text properly by looking at microstructures analysis and the
way that is represented. The students are also hoped to become more critical in understanding
a political text and the way it is produced. In Addition, the researcher also hopes that the next
researchers are able to use and apply the theory of political discourse analysis in facing social
issues that taking place around us. Equally important, this research also offers a new
understanding about one of Van Dijk‟s model of CDA, microstructures.
8
1.6 Research Method
This part of research provided a detailed description of research design, data sources,
research instrument, data collection, data analysis and review of the research method.
1.6.1 Research Design
This research utilized qualitative research. This research dealt with qualitative
research because the researcher came to describe the reality of the data without involving
any statistical method. This qualitative research was conducted to identify and to
investigate the representation of Duterte in the media coverage related to his policy of
war on drugs by using the theory of Van Dijk‟s microstructures and Chilton‟s political
discourse.
1.6.2 Data Sources
This research focused on the analysis of Rodrigo‟s drug war policy. The
analysis employed two kinds of source; the transcript of Rodrigo‟s interview with
Aljazeera and the news articles of Rodrigo‟s drug war policy. Those data were
downloaded from internet. Those objects were selected because they indicate the power
practice in any kinds of Rodrigo‟s coverage especially in BBC News.com. The power
practice could be known from the way the journalist and Rodrigo were attempting to
denote their own beliefs and opinions about war on drug through their statements, so that
those might lead the readers‟ minds either to align themselves with the journalist or
Rodrigo to construct such a representation to Rodrigo and his policy of war on drug.
The existence of power practice was being a part of political discourse analysis
proposed by Paul Chilton. The researcher took the data of Rodrigo‟s interview from
YouTube with the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqvCk16LebU and the data
of news articles from BBC News.com with the links http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-37162323, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37172002,
9
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37295787, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
37548695, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-38311655,
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38793008, and http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-38823938.
The researcher herself was intentionally using two data because she desired to
provide not only how Rodrigo was represented in the discourse, but also how Rodrigo
created his own representation that may be used to defense himself in the bad judgment
in the society. In the light of data sources, the researcher analyzed and described local
meaning in Rodrigo‟s interview and media coverage by using Van Dijk‟s approaches.
1.6.3 Data Collection
The researcher had several steps to collect the data. Firstly, the researcher read
the BBC News articles and watched Rodrigo‟s interview with Aljazeera for several times
in order to focus on power practice constructed by the journalist and Rodrigo in creating
such a representation in the society related to the policy of war on drug. Then, the
researcher focused on the strategies the journalist and Rodrigo used to convey their own
beliefs and opinions about policy of war on drug, so that the researcher could get better
understanding about what elements that may lead Rodrigo to either bad or good
representation, or how those were represented. At least, the researcher analyzed power
practice in the local meaning, and representation formed by the journalist and Rodrigo.
Secondly, the researcher transcribed Rodrigo‟s interview in the form of script
because Aljazeera did not provide the transcript of the interview. She did transcription by
listening to the video of interview for many times to get the valid words and sentences.
Moreover, she grouped those data, BBC News articles and the transcript of Rodrigo‟s
interview; into some excerpts contained in micro analysis which were listed based on
each datum. The excerpts of the news articles were listed based on the sequence of the
10
published date. In addition, the excerpts of the transcript of Rodrigo‟s interviewed were
listed based on the data interview, so that those might denote the parts of Rodrigo‟s self-
representation related to his controversial war on drug.
Thirdly, the researcher provided texts in bold form referred to the data
mentioned, and italicized word meant as the data discussed or analysis of the related
data. Finally, she concluded the result of the analysis.
1.6.4 Data Analysis
The data analysis was done by following some procedures as follows; first, the
researcher identified the information on the data of Rodrigo‟s interview taken from
YouTube. Due to the fact that Rodrigo, in his interview, was not only talking about his
policy of war on drug, but also the problems of Philippines‟ military relationship with
other countries, the researcher was cutting off the data of transcription since only a half
of interview talked about war on drug. Second, the researcher identified and classified
both the transcript and the news articles based on the categorization of some strategies in
micro level and the reasons of the using of those strategies, so that she would find how
the journalist created a representation of Rodrigo and how Rodrigo also used his strategy
to construct his own representation in the society. Those data were analyzed by using the
theory of political discourse analysis and semantic microstructures. The last step, the
researcher started to draw conclusion according to the research questions.
1.7 Definition of the Key Terms
The definition of the key terms was used to specify the definition of some points in
this research, I provided the key terms as follows:
1. Discourse: Human‟s language use, either in the form of speech or writing.
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2. Critical discourse analysis: a study that address to social power abuse, dominance, and
inequality that are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and
political context.
3. Political discourse analysis: a study that examines the reproduction of political power,
power abuse or domination through political discourse involving the various form of
resistance or counter-power against such forms of discursive dominance.
4. Microstructures: The local meaning of a text which can be observed from the choice
of word, sentence and the language style used in a text.
5. BBC News: British‟s mass media that provide and broadcast international information
on television and radio programs.
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CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter pervades the theory of political discourse analysis (PDA) (Paul Chilton
and Norman & Isabela Fairclough), Van Dijk‟s model of CDA, role of media, and previous
study. The elaborated explanations are described as follows:
2.1 Political Discourse Analysis
Political discourse analysis is a study that both focuses on political discourse and
critical enterprise. PDA, in the spirit of contemporary approaches of critical discourse
analysis (CDA), is known as critical-political discourse analysis because it examines the
reproduction of political power, power abuse or domination through political discourse
involving the various forms of resistance or counter-power against such forms of discursive
dominance (Van Dijk: what is critical discourse analysis?). Domination is such the outcome
from an analysis that explores the discursive conditions and consequences of social and
political inequality. Therefore, political discourse analysis is understood as the analysis of
political discourse from a critical perspective in which the perspective focuses on the
reproduction and contestation of political power through political discourse.
Before coming to the more knowledge about political discourse analysis, we, firstly,
must know what politics is and what political discourse analysts looking for. Politics is
considered as a struggle for power, between them who seek to assert and preserve their power
and them who seek to resist it (Chilton, 2004). On the other hand, politics can be considered
as cooperation, practices and institutions that a society has for settling fights of interest over
money, influence, liberty, and so forth. Politics itself includes reconciling differences through
discussion and persuasion.
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In Chilton‟s theory of political discourse, he proposes two orientations in political
views as follows: at micro level, he regards that this point are focused on conflicts of interest,
struggles for dominance and efforts at cooperation between individuals, genders, and social
groups of various kinds. Whereas, at macro level, he regards that focuses on political
institutions of the state in which deals with the way to resolve conflicts of interests and to
assert the power of a dominant individual or group. Micro-level is involved in kinds of
linguistics action called discourse. Equally, macro-level also has the same position such
micro have but it has specific characteristic for example parliamentary debates, broadcast
interviews, and constitutions and laws (high specific type).
In the political domain, Hague et al cited Miller (1991: 390) that political process
typically includes persuasion and bargaining. It is because communication is considered as
the central of politics so that the politicians should do persuasion and bargaining in order to
achieve decision-making, as Norman & Isabela‟s view of the nature of politics. That line of
reasoning can be employed as guide to the need to explain how use of language can produce
the effects of authority, legitimacy, consensus, and so on that are acknowledged as being
intrinsic to politics. Paul cited Hague et al (1998: 14) stated that “persuasion and bargaining
are being authoritative-a process that includes force or the threat of force”. However, politics
only just exists if decisions are achieved solely by violence but force or its threat is central to
the execution of collective decisions.
From that brief explanation, Paul has directly indicated how the nature of politics is
that can be used to begin the analysis on political discourse. Like Norman & Isabela‟s
statement that we should work from a coherent view of the nature of politics if we want to get
the central questions on the analysis of political discourse. In addition, that way, according to
political discourse analysts, will lead us to the end up of the views of politics in which the
questions of representation is central. On the other side, that way is opposed to Norman &
14
Isabela‟s approach because they believe that that is the way to achieve the question of
decision-making and action which will be in the harmony of argumentation theory as their
approach.
Analysis of political discourse sometimes draw a confusion in others thought because
they are not sure how to determine whether their data is the real data of political discourse or
not. However, Norman & Isabela are in the line of thinking with Van Dijk who stated that if
we want to know what political discourse examines about, we, firstly, should know who the
actors or authors, i.e. politicians are. It is because political discourse will examine more about
the text and the talk of professional politicians such as president, prime minister, member of
government, and so forth in local, national or international levels. Therefore, the contexts that
are talking about something outside the characterization of political discourse are not
political.
Political context or usually called institutional context is the proper matter for us to
observe how the actors, in the context, are able to exert their agency and how it empower
them to act on the world that has an effect on matters of common business (Fairclough,
2012). The answers can bring us over to the mental representation of the actors, then. Just
like Merelman statement, 1986 cited on Van Dijk post that “our knowledge and opinions
about politicians, parties or presidents are largely acquired, charged, and confirmed by
various forms of text and talk during our socialization" (Van Dijk, 2002). The mental
representation of the actors is discussing in depth on Van Dijk‟s review, political cognition.
In doing the analysis of political discourse, it is better for us not only to engage with
political discourse itself, but also political cognition for it will lead us to the answer of how
the micro and macro levels look manifest themselves at the same time. Van Dijk proposed
three levels and dimensions of political domain such base, intermediate and top level. The
15
base level comprises of individual political actors, as well as their beliefs, discourse and other
interactions in political situations. The intermediate level formed part of the base level which
consists of political groups and institutions, as well as their shared representations, collective
discourse, relations and interactions. And the top level, that in development is based on the
intermediate level, formed by political systems, and their abstract representation, orders of
discourse, and socio-political, cultural and historical processes.
Those can later utilize to show how the micro and the macro levels are able to
manifest each other. For example, when a politician addresses his or her speech in parliament
speaks, he or she indirectly expresses his or her personal political beliefs in a unique way and
in a unique context. At the same time, that person delivers her or his speech as a Member of
Parliament or Congress, as a member of a party and so on. Consequently, that person is
possibly „doing‟ opposition against another party or against government and denoting the
attitudes or ideologies of the own group. As a result, by doing that, he or she is enacting a
system of parliamentary democracy, remaking the discourse order of democracy and
democratic ideologies, and suspecting a historical variable Common Ground of cultural
knowledge, norms and values, spread of by all other groups of the same culture (Van Dijk,
2002).
The three levels aforementioned indicate that discourse and politics can be connected
to basically two ways: (1) political processes and structures are formed by situated events,
interactions and discourses of political actors in political contexts at a socio-political level of
description. (2) Sharing political representations are connected to individual representations
of these discourses, interactions and contexts at a socio-cognitive level of description. For
instance, a biased text about immigrants may capture from personal beliefs about immigrants
and these beliefs in development may be connected to the shared racist attitudes or ideologies
of a larger group. Hence, political cognition provided as the indispensable theoretical
16
interface between the personal and the collective dimensions of politics and political
discourse.
2.1.1 Political Cognition
The study of political cognition deals with various aspects of political
information processing. It is because it basically focuses on the acquisition, uses and
structures of mental representations about political situations, events, actors, and groups (Van
Dijk, 2002). Van Dijk, in this domain, is essentially employing mental models that provide as
the necessary connect between socially shared political cognition and personal beliefs of the
actors, and the cognitive basis of political discourse and political action. Thus, Van Dijk
mental models in political cognition may interface the political macrostructures of shared
representations of groups and institutions with the political microstructures of the activities of
political actors.
In Van Dijk review on Paul & Christina‟ book (2002), he demonstrates a brief
summary of theoretical framework utilized to study the relations between political discourse
and political cognition as follows:
1. Cognitive processes and representations are considered as relative to an abstract
mental structure called “memory”.
2. Executing the information using Short Term Memory (STM) and Long Term Memory
(LTM).
3. A further information execution done by Episodic Memory (the personal information)
and Semantic Memory (the nature of information).
4. Organizing information in LTM in various types of mental representations.
5. Forming knowledge, note that what may be „knowledge‟ for one group (period or
culture) may be deemed mere „beliefs‟ or „opinions‟ by other groups.
17
6. Forming groups‟ attitudes, ideologies, norms and values with the knowledge.
7. Organizing the attitudes and ideologies referring to the characteristic schemas.
8. Constituted the „architecture‟ of Social Memory by a Common Ground of socio-
cultural beliefs.
9. Offering personal experience and knowledge, as represented in people Episodic
Memory.
10. Models are the personal representation of such an event and subjective.
11. Models form the cognitive basis of all individual discourse and interaction.
12. Models integrate new information, fragments of earlier experiences, and instantiations
of more general personal information.
13. Models may constitute the basis of experiential social and political learning.
Those are actually going to be familiar with psychology matter but that would
lead us to the answer of how the political discourse can quite relate to political cognition. Due
to the fact that the literature on political cognition does focus on knowledge, attitudes and
ideologies, as well as their schematic organization and processing, it almost ignores the
theory of mental models which however is quite generally accepted in the psychology of text
processing, for example (Van Dijk, 2002).
In the process of discourse production, we presume that the writers or the
speakers will commonly start from their personal mental model of an event or situation. This
representation, then, arranges the subjective beliefs of the speaker about such a situation (see.
e.g. pp. 13). As the readers, of course, we may whether receive his or her representation or
construct other alternatives models of the situation depending on our own personal
knowledge of the current situation as well as on socially shared, group knowledge and
evaluations. That model show us how conformity of political attitudes and ideologies are
18
utilized in the construction of an individual model or representation of the current situation,
and how some of that model information is intentionally choosing to be expressed in
parliamentary speech, therefore.
The writers, in producing social representation, must know what information
involve in their discourses. It is because they must have to know something about the current
communicative situation of their text or talk involving the presumed beliefs of their
recipients. In addition in Van Dijk (2002), they also must have knowledge on what occasion
they are speaking, so that they might evaluate whether the expression of their beliefs is
appropriate in the current social situation (cf. Fussell and Krauss 1992). Then by doing that,
the writers can later define such a context and affect the ways of the readers‟ understanding
and evaluating them and so on.
To see how the way the writers represent their understanding about an event in
a discourse, Van Dijk proposed „context model‟ to observe and to prove how important the
social situation and its interpretation are for discourse and communication. Van Dijk cited on
Chilton & Christina (2002) stated that “context models typically control not only what is
being said but also especially how it is said”. It means that the writers control what relevant
information of event models involved in the semantic representation of a text and how are
such meanings being in charge variably arranged in syntactic structures, lexical items, and
phonological or graphical expressions.
Context models are considered as relevant equipment for an explicit analysis
of political discourse genres. The genre is defined here as a political discourse that may well
be contextual rather than textual. Van Dijk cited on Chilton & Christina (2002) stated that
“the element of the context of political text and talk are the overall domain and definition of
the situation, the setting, circumstances, participant roles, aims, opinions and emotions”.
19
Hence, we may temporarily judge that political discourse genres are basically defined by their
functions in the political process, as represented by the categories of the political context
models (Van Dijk, 2002). In other words, Van Dijk cited on Chilton & Christina (2002)
declared that “whatever a politician says is by definition a form of a political discourse and
whatever anybody says with a political aim (e.g. decision-making, policies) is also a form of
political discourse”.
Those are the models of political actors forming in the writers‟ episodic
memory. In order to produce or understand political discourse and action, we finally have to
talk about the socially shared dimension of political cognition. We have presumed that social
memory is formed by knowledge, attitudes, ideologies, values and norms (see pp. 14).
Nonetheless, we may need the structure of general political representations to understand the
structures of political discourse. It is because we must know how the political attitudes and
ideologies are represented, what the role of political values and norms is in such
representations, how such structures may affect the content and the structures of both events
models and contexts models, and how finally they may emerge in political discourse.
2.1.1.1 Knowledge
To get further understanding about political cognition, we might have to
be introduced with „knowledge‟ in which it may be often misunderstood or misperception by
others. There are two types of knowledge viz. knowledge shared by a specific group and
general cultural knowledge shared across different groups throughout society or the others
(Van Dijk, 2002). Those are constructed by Van Dijk to distinguish „knowledge‟ in the
approach of political cognition and „knowledge‟ in the philosophical and psychological
approaches. Something considered as a „factual‟ belief in the society that is commonly
undisputed, uncontroversial and taken for granted called as knowledge in society. However,
20
that factual belief is not definite as „true‟ in specific groups. In other words, there are factual
beliefs that are only received as „true‟ by particular social groups, such as scientists, experts,
professionals, member of specific religions, member of a party or any other kind of group
(Van Dijk, 2002). That is called „knowledge‟ within the group itself so that knowledge
outside the group called „belief‟ or „opinion‟.
Most of political knowledge is group knowledge that is often going to be
viewed as „mere political opinion‟ by opposing groups (Van Dijk, 2002). For instance,
knowledge of feminists about male dominance in society might be refused by a number of
men. Socially shared knowledge of specific groups or complete cultures requires being
applicable in many situations so that requires being general and abstract. Therefore, Van
Dijk‟s work in distinguish the term of knowledge, in this sense, not only to form difference
between cultural and group knowledge but also between social and personal knowledge.
2.1.1.2 Opinions and Attitudes
People‟ knowledge, either cultural or group and social or personal is
actually emerging a belief of what we called „factual‟ because persons, groups and whole
cultures hold them to be true according to their respective truth criteria. However, in the
society or social memory, the belief is not pretty sure to deal as a truth for it will present its
basis of evaluative criteria (e.g. good vs. bad, etc.), called opinions. Thus, what may be a
factual belief of one group may be an evaluative belief or opinion for another.
Sharing social opinions may be arranged in larger structures, for which we
provide the traditional term attitude. The topic of immigration in shared group attitude
usually comprise of more than one opinion, for instance. Moreover, Van Dijk‟s framework
attitudes are primarily social and associated with group so that individuals may have personal
opinions but only share in attitudes as members of such groups. Therefore, Van Dijk (2002)
21
stated that opinions in personal mental models may be formed on the basis of shared social
attitudes of groups.
2.1.1.3 Ideologies
Ideologies here are the last destination of social representations in which
knowledge and attitudes in social representation shared by a group might be arranged by
underlying ideologies. Ideologies are by definition general and abstract for they must relate to
a lot of different attitudes in different social domains (Van Dijk, 2002). In addition, social
learning from experience (models) or direct indoctrination is extensively needed in the level
of abstraction and complex control of social cognition (Van Dijk, 2002). Thus, ideologies are
acquired relatively late in development and not in the same detailed way by all group
members.
The way people organized their behavior in their everyday lives denotes
that they do have their ideologies (Milburn, 1987 cited on Chilton & Christina, 2002) because
classical work on political ideologies (Converse, 1964 cited on Chilton & Christina, 2002) as
well as some directions in contemporary social psychology (Billig 1991a, 1991b cited on
Chilton & Christina 2002) demonstrates that people have social attitudes, thus, people have
no stable ideologies. Personal ideological variations shows in surveys and (other) discourse,
can simply be described in terms of persona; opinions as embodied by models of events
(personal experiences) and context, and for individuals are members of different social
groups, each with their own attitudes and ideologies (Krosnick and Milburn, 1990 cited on
Chilton & Christina, 2002).
2.1.1.4 Political Cognition: Concluding Remarks
Based on the aforementioned theoretical analysis and descriptions of the
example, we can conclude that those are helping researchers or readers to understand and
22
explain what political discourse is about so that those may be able to support us in examining
the underlying political cognition of participants in political communication, then.
2.2 Teun A. Van Dijk’s Model of CDA
Text is a kind of discursive practice which describe about how people are represented
in a discourse. Text has literally hidden messages that the writers did not want to show it
implicitly to the reader. In addition, Mills claimed text is linguistic communication either
spoken or written proclaimed simply as a message coded in its auditory or visual medium
(Darma, 2014). To know that, Van Dijk, then, creates a theory that investigates hidden
messages in a text that is influenced by the writer‟s cognition. Van Dijk‟s theory is, then,
called as social cognition. In the approach of social cognition, Van Dijk views a text more
than just a form of discourse practice but it is a form of knowledge that critically explain us
about why a text is produced in a certain point of view. He also argue that a text comprise
several structures in which those support each other. To get deep understanding about how to
analyze a text, Van Dijk, then, proposes three level of discourse structure such
macrostructure, superstructure and microstructure. Those stand with different goal in
analyzing a text. It can be seen from the schema of Van Dijk‟s discourse analysis model
(Eriyanto, 2001).
DISCOURSE
STRUCTURE
THINGS WHICH ARE
OBSERVED
ELEMENT
Macrostructures Thematic
The topic or theme that is
covered in the text
Topic
Superstructures Schematic
How a part of a text is
Schematic
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schemed in the whole part of
a text.
Microstructures Semantic
The meaning that desires to
be emphasized in a text.
Setting, detail, aim,
prejudice, and
nominalization.
Syntaxes
How the form and
organization of the sentence
is formed.
Sentence form, coherence,
and pronoun.
Stylistic
How the diction is used in
news article.
Lexicon.
Rhetoric
How and in what way the
tendency is done.
Graphic, metaphor,
expression.
Nonetheless, the researcher inclines only microstructures analysis.
2.2.1 Microstructures
Microstructure is the last level in Van Dijk‟s model of CDA which analyze the
local meaning of a text. Local meaning basically deals with some the terms such as semantic
which analyze the meaning that desires to be emphasized in a text, syntaxes which investigate
how the form and organization of the sentence is formed, stylistic which examine how the
diction is used in news article and the last is rhetoric which analyze how and in what way the
tendency in a text is done. The existence of microstructures can be separated from
macrostructures that analyze about the global meaning. It is because it principally has a main
24
role in determining the processing of microstructures because the topic and the theme that the
writer made will give an effect in the content of a text. Thus, topic or theme of a text will
bring a historical background of an event to the writer to draw a real line, later, in the content
of a text.
2.2.1.1 Semantic
The writer begins his or her interpretation by arranging the setting of an
event. Setting is the starting point for writer to determine which way he or she wants to go to
form the views of the reader. In addition, setting is commonly put in the beginning of the
content before coming to the real purpose of the writer. He or she did the strategy because he
or she wants to influence and to give a logical impression to the reader that his or her
statement is reasonable (Eriyanto, 2001). Hence, the setting of a text constitutes a beneficial
element because it can break what the exact goal that the journalist or the writer wants to
convey about.
The content of a text is not only defined as the core of an event that is
represented by the writer, but also as a tool for him or her to impact reader‟s cognition. It can
be seen from the way he or she draws a good or bad representation of a/some groups. In the
process of forming a representation of a/some groups, the writer can provide either detail or
sketchy information to support his or her interpretation. As a result, good or bad
representation is a form of necessary for the writer in presenting a text. Moreover, detail or
sketchy information in a text can determine the position of the writer and the organization in
the social judgment. It means that while providing the content of a text, the writer should
ponder the benefit that he or she can get from his or her interpretation of an event. Thus,
social judgment is a reflection of the writer‟s interpretation in a text.
25
2.2.1.2 Syntaxes
In syntaxes aspect, the writer is demanded to have a good sense in
constructing sentence or paragraph. Good sense is here defined as an ability to recognize a
good text through the way the writer present a text. A text can be considered as a good text if
the writer can apply coherence and pronoun in proper way. The goal of applying coherence
form is to intertwine a word to another words or a sentence to another sentences. In the other
side, pronoun itself is used to notice the usage of first, second, and third person.
The instrument of syntaxes aspect is not only on coherence and pronoun, but also
on a form of sentence. The writer, sometimes, employs passive form in a sentence to clarify a
position of somebody is as an object. Conversely, the writer utilizes active form in a sentence
in order to denote the position of someone in an event is as a subject. For instance, police shot
the students or the students are shot by the police. Those are syntactically correct, but those
variant of topic indicate its prominant level in which one of them can be focussed on spesific
words, phrase, i.e the relative clause immediately affect the meaning of the whole context.
Therefore, syntaxes aspect is the description of the writer‟s knowledge in organizing a
sentence.
2.2.1.3 Stylistic
Stylistic aspect is a part of a text that indicates the writer‟s ability in the
usage of choice of words. The main topic of a text can be understandable and can make a
sense only if the writer uses the right words in describing something. For example, the killing
of Trisakti student can be presented with the words “killing”, “accident” or “slaughter”.
Those can be used by the journalist based on his or her choice of words. Therefore, the writer
should have rich vocabulary to describe something properly.
26
2.2.1.4 Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the writer‟s aspect in emphasizing and expressing something in
a text. For instance, while presenting news, the writer employs either bold, italic or underline
to make a stress of an event. Stressing is needed to be done if the word contains important
meaning. The using of bold, italic, underline and so forth is called graphic. Graphic not only
can be recognized from the using of bold form in a sentence, but also from the usage of a
picture, or table in a text. In a text, the writer, sometimes, uses metaphor expression to
describe an event in a creative way. By applying metaphor in a text, the writer implicitly
indicates the readers about the real meaning of a text. Hence, the using of graphic and
metaphor expression in a text can quite help the writer to send the hidden message to the
readers.
2.3 Role of Media
The development of media, theoretically, may not be separated from the term of
power. It is because media not only a tool of presenting news, values, et cetera. but also an
institution that form the audiences‟ opinions. Nevertheless, it also can develop as a press
group for ideas or opinions. Althusser views media as a means of legitimating because it
constructs the pursuance of the audiences to dominant groups, then (Sobur, 2012). On the
other hand, Gramsci considers media not only as a means of legitimating but also as a space
in which any kinds of ideologies are represented. Because of the difference of media‟s view,
both Althusser and Gramsci agree that mass media literarily is not a particular thing that is
free and independent but it associates with social fact. Hence, media can be considered as a
kind of consensus that exists for presenting the particular interest of a social group and is a
mirror and reflection of the society.
27
Mass media is, practically, often claimed as a determination variable because it
determines the process of the alteration of culture and social, and politics (Sobur, 2012). Karl
Deutsch, on the context of mass media as an information institution, proclaims that media is
the nerves of government. It is because someone who has the access to media is whom can
rule the society. As the consequent, non-dominant groups will be marginalized as long as
they have no access to the media. Therefore, media do play an important role in the
development of culture and social, and politics.
Because of the development era, a lot of people compete to create something new in
technology industry in order to facilitate others to be easier to keep in touch with technology.
As we can see, today we have not only offline mass media but also online mass media in
which it is quite helping people in knowing the world. Besides, people also have an easier
time to get information through online mass media. Online media is identical with internet
system that people can reach in any information by using an application on his or her smart
phone, computer, or tablet. Thus, internet is an alternative system that people incline to use to
help them in getting faster information.
There are many online mass media that can be access by people from every country
such as BBC News, CNN News, Aljazeera, daily mail, New York Times, kompas.com, and
so forth. People can either access past or recent news without waiting for the printed
newspaper spread out. Al-Hejin (2015) asserts that in online mass media, BBC News website
has arguably become one of the most widely read and influential news sources in the world
(Barnett, 2011; BBC Global, 2007; BBC Governors, 2004: 43–45; BBC History, 2007;
Hinde, 2005; Thurman, 2007: 289). Thus, the researcher employ this research by using the
role of BBC News in providing Duterte‟s news related to drug war policy.
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2.4 Previous Studies
Moustafa (2015) entitled „Linguistic gender identity construction in political
discourse. A corpus-assisted analysis of the primary speeches of Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton‟. The researcher found that both Obama and Hillary had different interest in political
affairs so that it established their political identities and gender identities, for instance,
Obama tended to be more focus on foreign policy, whereas Clinton inclines her concern on
domestic policy. Another example, Obama inclined to be focus on racial, ethnical and
religious issues, yet Clinton herself only put more attention to women‟s issues. Hence, the
researcher discovered that either Obama or Clinton comes to different notions of gender-
related functionalizing words of profession, male fitness and gender representations depended
on the way the use language to convey people and the topical interest they have.
Al-Shabibani (2014) entitled „the first elections in the New Iraq in 2005: A critical
discourse analysis‟. He found that macro and micro semantics reflected the dichotomy
between the in-group and out-group stance towards New Iraq whereby positive self-
representation and negative other-representation were explicitly and implicitly denoted
respectively in the text of the news story.
Susanto (2014), on his entitle „a critical discourse analysis of power domination on
Barack Obama‟s speech about military action to Syria‟. He founded that Obama uses his
power as a president of America because of twofold; (1) to dominate and control the other
power. (2) to gain legitimacy from the International community on his policy to take military
action Syria. Then, to eliminate several obstacles and opposition of his policy, Obama used
his power domination to handle that issue. To show Obama‟s power domination, he uses
some strategies such as defining situation, number game, evidentiality, hyperbole, self-
positive representative, negative other representation, consensus, empathy, national self-
glorification, and polarization; us and them dichotomy.
29
There are also some studies have been done in micro level of analysis such as
Ningrum (2014), entitle „inclusion strategies in The Jakarta Post crime news on the women
issues‟. In her analysis, she described that the journalist tended to advocate women as the
victims by using some strategies such as genericisation, specification, assimilation,
indetermination, determination, nomination, categorization (functionalization and
identification), personalization, and objectification. Moreover, The Jakarta Post‟s journalist
also inclines to relate the women‟s part of life such as family in order to attract the readers‟
interest for that may stimulate the readers‟ concern to the victims. Thus, the using of
inclusion strategies in The Jakarta Post is intentionally applied to reveal another fact of the
victims so that it may assist the journalist to advocate the women who are often marginalized
in the news coverage.
Fitrianingsih (2015), entitle „semantic change in the official words on Facebook‟. She
found that there were some semantic change in official words on Facebook such as metaphor,
metonymy, and generalization. Semantic change itself happened because there were many
motivations involved semantic change such as historical causes, psychological causes,
language-internal and social causes used by Facebook inventor. Thus, she concluded that
Facebooker may become easier in applying Facebook because of those factors in semantic
change.
Based on the research of Moustafa (2015) and Susanto (2014) both of them
discovered the same goal in conducting their study are to find and to prove the existence of
power and domination in political contexts. Susanto, in this sense, inclined to describe that
Obama employs his power when addressing his speech in order to dominate and control the
other power and to gain legitimacy from the International community on his policy to take
action Syria. While Moustafa, in this sense, focused on proving the way Barack Obama and
Hillary employed their own power and domination on their passion in the domain of politics.
30
Nevertheless, they utilized different media in providing their data and supporting their
arguments. Susanto used some strategy such as defining situation, number game,
evidentiality, hyperbole, self-positive representative, negative other representation,
consensus, empathy, national self-glorification, and polarization to discover Obama‟s power
practice in his speech, Moustafa utilized corpus in providing Obama‟s and Clinton‟s speeches
and in examining the data.
Ningrum (2014), and Fitianingsih (2015) had conducted their researches on focusing
on the role of semantic microstructures in social contexts. However, they had different
subject on their studies. Ningrum used news articles of The Jakarta Post in which she
investigated the using of inclusion strategy in its news coverage about women that tend to be
marginalized by media. And Fitrianingsih utilized Facebook as her subject to examine and to
describe semantic change occurred in the way the users used their social media.
The present research, therefore, in short term, is quite related to Susanto (2014) and
Moustafa (2015) in examining and describing the existence of power and domination in
political contexts, although the present researcher has different subject, object, and media
with them. Based on the suggestions on their research, they regard the next researcher to
detect how identities are constructed to be used in other Political Discourse such as in media
discourse. In addition, the present researcher also analyzes the local meaning such what
Ningrum (2014) & Fitrianingsih (2015) have done. Both of them also hoped that the next
researcher may be able to explore more about semantic change and other micro strategies in
social contexts. Thus, the present researcher attempts to do their suggestions by using
Rodrigo‟s controversial policy of war on drugs which has paralyzed the drugs users and
dealers in execution of killings as the subject and object, and describing how Rodrigo‟s
representation created by the media. BBC News.com also has an important role in this
research, then.
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CHAPTER III
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter presents the result of the study that deals with the identification of
semantic macrostructures of Rodrigo‟s war on drugs in the BBC News coverage. Due to the
fact that there are some parts that will produce the same analysis, the researcher only describe
it once to avoid the repetitions of analysis.
3.1 Findings
After analyzing the data of BBC News articles and transcript of Rodrigo‟s interview
with Aljazeera, the researcher decided to stress firstly that she had two kinds of data in which
both of them were related each other in finding and describing a particular representation of
Rodrigo in news coverage. The first data were signed by coding article 1, 2, 3 and so on as
like what had been classified in the table on appendix, and described firstly in the first part of
findings. While, the second data were marked by coding data utterance number 1, 2, 3 and so
on in the second table on appendix, and described right after the description of the first data.
Furthermore, the researcher considered to divide the analyses into two different tables. It was
because she desired to denote how microstructures element in Rodrigo‟s interview and BBC
news coverage took their parts in appearing such a representation about Rodrigo related to his
policy of war on drug.
The following descriptions of findings were described based on research questions.
The researcher here describes firstly about semantic microstructures that tend to be associated
with Duterte‟s drug war policy through micro level analyses such as exclusion, inclusion, and
so on. And the descriptions of the answer of Duterte‟s representation in the media coverage
related to his policy of war on drug directly reflect in the explanation of the answer of the
first question. Thus, one analysis is conducted to answer two questions at the same time.
32
3.1.1 Semantic Microstructures Analysis
After listing the data above, the researcher explained them by connecting the excerpts
with the theories, so that those might produce academically answers and reasons.
3.1.1.1 Exclusion
Exclusion is included in microstructures element which describe about how an actor
or a group is taken outside of a discourse. There are three kinds of exclusions, yet the
researcher just employs two of them because they are involved in the journalist‟s statements.
3.1.1.1.1 Passivation
Leeuwen‟s passivation strategy inclines to hide the subject of an action,
and focus on the object so that the readers will be more concerned with and attracted
to the object than the subject, and then that tend to drag the readers down to the
uncritical way of thinking for the readers‟ minds have been under the control of the
conditions of the object not to who the subject/s is/are (Eriyanto, 2001).
In the data, the journalist utilized passivation strategy in article 1, 2, 3, 5,
6, and 7. There are some excerpts in article 1 involved in passivation such as: first, in
the excerpt “… his father was beaten up in front of them”. “They were later taken to
a police station and allegedly killed there”. As we can see, the journalist is applying
passivation strategy in which he or she does not mention the subject of killings. The
journalist here has probably intended to hide the subject because he or she wants to set
the readers‟ minds out of the conditions of the killing victims. The journalist‟s action
here may be judged as his or her way to exploit the victims to get the readers‟ interest
and not to defend the rights of victims. It is because the readers will be concerned to
the way the victims were treated.
Then, they will automatically have sympathy to them. However, the
journalist here is not actually hiding the subject at all for the journalist has denoted the
33
location (of police station) where it is obviously showing who the subject would be
that the journalist does not mention. That may appear another anger feeling in the
readers‟ thought, then. Although, the journalist does not mention explicitly about the
subject of killings but his or her choice of word may immediately demonstrate the
subject so that the journalist, at the same time, may be able to both get the readers‟
sympathy and get the police in bad representation, therefore.
Second, the using of passivation strategy is detected in the excerpt “the
two police officers accused claimed an attempt had been made to grab one of their
guns, but this was refuted by the Philippines Commission on Human Rights. It said
they had been badly injured and were shot three times. The two officers have been
charged with murder.” In line with micro analysis, the journalist employs Leeuwen‟s
exclusion, passive form, to draw and control the readers‟ sympathy to the victims. The
journalist focuses his or her restating information on the condition of the victims and
eludes to represent the subject of the violation. It is because the journalist believes that
providing a grievous condition of the victims is more attractive the readers‟ interest
than showing who the subject of violation is and why the subject commit that
violence.
Additionally, the usage of passivation itself signalizes that the journalist is
standing up for the witness so that he or she is more pay attention to the condition of
the victims. But, that journalist‟s action can be considered as an action or strategy to
get rid of the police which has involved in doing violence to the drugs suspects. Thus,
the usage of passive form in the news coverage, out of Leeuwen‟s perspective, may
denote the journalist‟s real thought in which he or she may be intentionally commit
that to raise the readers‟ sympathy to the victims and to drag the police down to bad
representation at the same time.
34
Third, the statement of “… a total of 1,916 deaths had been recorded
during the crackdown, 756 of which were during police operations” denotes that the
journalist also utilizes passivation strategy in which he or she attempts to put the
readers‟ attention to the fate of those victims. Clarifying a number of deaths in passive
form might be aimed to make sure that Rodrigo‟s crackdown is no longer in line with
the law of humanity for he has succeeded in shooting down a lot of people as soon as
that was legalized and run. Therefore, BBC journalist inclines to employ number of
game and passivation in the same time in order to present a sense of marginalization
to Rodrigo‟s policy and the way he handled the increase of death rate.
Fourth, the journalist‟s restatement included in passivation is“… 300
police officers were suspected to be involved in the drugs trade, warning that they
would be charged and removed from their positions if found guilty”. In line with
micro structures, the warning of the police director-general is restated in the form of
passive sentence by the journalist not to get the readers‟ sympathy but to denote “what
a shame they are, they have desecrated the police dignity as a wise and firm figure in
the society, one of problem solver institutions and protectors of the country, and so
forth”. In addition, the journalist also provides number of suspected police officers in
his or her statement.
As we know, Leeuwen has stated that the usage of passivation is intend to
appear a sense of sympathy to the victims because the media or the journalist
intentionally hide or disappear the main subject of violence in a text, and passivation,
according to Leeuwen, tend to make the readers become less critical (Eriyanto, 2001).
However, BBC journalist here is not intend to get the readers‟ sympathy of the police
drug suspect for he or she is focusing on reforming the readers‟ critical thought about
“how it could be”, “shame on the police”, “why they can easily commit to drug trade
35
when it is obviously breaking the law of the country and rule on the police domain”,
and so on.
Last, the using of passive form is in the excerpt“… 1,000 people were
killed with no legal process”. Passivation strategy is utilized to shift the readers‟
attention to the victims so that they will be more sympathy to the condition of the
victims than curious about whom the subjects are that commit the killings to a number
of people with no legal process. That strategy is in the line with Leeuwen‟s
perspective about passivation strategy. Therefore, by combining those strategies, the
journalist desires to be more dramatizing the condition of the victims in one side and
be more drawing a marginalization about the subject in the other side.
In article 2, there are also some statements included in passivation as
follows: first, “She described how it began when her husband was commissioned to
kill a debtor by a policeman - one who was also a drug pusher”. That statement is
clearly formed in the form of passivation. In the line with Leeuwen‟s perspective
about passivation, he has insisted that the usage of passive sentence in the news
coverage may be employed to hide or not to present the main actor of an action.
Additionally, most of media or journalist is more interested in presenting the
conditions of the victims than the actor because they desire to form and control the
readers‟ way of thinking about an event and attract the readers to keep reading the
news.
Nonetheless, passivation strategy used by the journalist here is quite
different with Leeuwen‟ perspective in which the journalist keeps presenting the
main actor obviously based on his or her status and story behind. As we can see, the
journalist here attempts to get the readers‟ interest in Maria‟s husband firstly by
36
emerging sympathy statement in their minds such as “looking for a job nowadays is
quite difficult especially for them whom are not coming from rich and educated
family” or maybe “how poor they are, they should do everything to fulfill their
needs”. Those statements may come to the readers‟ minds as long as the journalist
wraps it in a proper passivation strategy.
Secondly, the journalist is extremely straightforward to represent the actor
behind of Maria‟s husband job. “By a policeman-one who was also a drug pusher”,
that statement has obviously proved that hide the actor in passivation cannot always
be interesting the readers‟ interest for the actor is still the main subject that should be
presented in a news coverage in order to avoid misunderstanding and provide a new
shocking fact. Therefore, the journalist in this sense is keeping on representing the
actor because he or she desires to get rid of the police explicitly by providing the fact
that the police was one of drugs pushers. That fact is also explicitly stated to influence
the readers‟ minds about who the real country protector figures are that they should
lean on to solve the problems in the society if the police are also committing a crime.
Second, “… five police generals, he says, are kingpins of the business.
But it is those at the lowest levels of the trade who are targeted by the death squads.”
In this journalist‟s passivation strategy, he or she demonstrates that though Rodrigo
has uncovered the police involvement in drugs trade but the death squads only target
the lowest levels of trade to be killed. Then, that may make the readers‟ questioning
why the kingpins are not involving in the death squads target. That readers‟ logical
thinking might indirectly show their disappointment to Rodrigo and the system
because it is running not for solving the problems but add a new problem. The citizens
might send their criticism to Rodrigo and the others member of government for they
cannot wisely and bravely give a sentence to the entire member of governments and
37
five police general that have been proven to be involving in that infraction. Thus, the
journalist here is trying to draw out the readers‟ critical thinking about what has been
decided by government related to the target of killings later on.
Third, the using of passive form in the journalist‟s restatement is in the
excerpt “Nearly all those whose bloodied bodies are discovered every night in the
slums of Manila …” The journalist here is utilizing Leeuwen‟s passivation and
categorization strategy. Passivation strategy can be recognized by seeing the way the
journalist changes the form of sentence into passive form. Like the previous analysis,
the journalist uses passivation strategy to get the readers‟ attention and sympathy
because he or she presents the conditions of died victims that were lying out on their
blood every night in the slums of Manila. That grievous condition may be able to
attract the readers‟ interest for they might think “how pity they are, drugs has
succeeded in bringing them in a bad situation”.
In article 3, there are three journalist‟s statements involved in passivation
strategy. First, the excerpt “Hundreds of alleged dealers have been killed in the
Philippines …” is obviously denoting the using of passive form. The journalist
utilizes passivation strategy is here to shift the readers‟ attention to the victims and
emerge their sense of humanity, sympathy. That excerpt is actually going to present
another make sense analysis if the analysis is connected with what we called
abstraction strategy which is outside consideration of passivation strategy. But, that
will be explained more in abstraction strategy.
Second, “Mr. Duterte, nicknamed "The Punisher", has been condemned by
the United Nations for his approach against crime” Based on that statement, we can
analyze that the journalist is using passivation strategy in reporting the UN criticism.
According to Leeuwen‟s belief, passivation is drawn as the way to attract the readers‟
38
interest to the victims and directly cover or hide the main subject. However, the
journalist here does not seem to either draw out the readers‟ attention to the victims or
cover the subject because the journalist inclines to attract the readers‟ interest in
criticizing Rodrigo and his policy. By knowing the UN response to Rodrigo‟s policy,
the readers might think that Rodrigo‟s decision is actually out of the track of the law
of humanity so that it is appropriate to condemn him firmly because of breaking the
law that he does. Hence, the journalist in this sense tries to get rid of Rodrigo by
taking a benefit from the UN criticism to him.
The last, “About 2,400 people have been killed since Mr. Duterte declared
his war on drugs …”, the journalist here uses passivation strategy in which he or she
denotes the increase of the death toll on the drugs operation. By presenting the
increasing rate of death in drug operation, the journalist desires to focus the readers‟
attention and interest on to the condition of the victims and implicitly denote the
critical thinking in the readers‟ minds about how many people should die in drugs
operation as long as Rodrigo does not end the war. Thus, the using of passivation in
every kind of BBC news coverage especially about drug war is aiming to get the
readers‟ interest and reliance so that the media will develop significantly because they
tend to use particular strategies to dramatize and get rid of the subject of an action.
In article 5, there are about two journalist‟s statements indicated
passivation. The first excerpt is “Nearly 6,000 people are said to have been killed by
police, vigilantes and mercenaries …” The journalist here employs passivation
strategy where he or she usually uses to dramatize or direct the readers‟ focus on the
condition of the victims. According to Leeuwen, passivation strategy is often utilized
to hide the conditions of the subject of an action. But, the BBC journalist here is still
representing the subject of those killings. The journalist may believe that that is better
39
to put the subject on show so that the readers will know how cruel they are. Therefore,
the journalist in this sense not only wants to attract the readers‟ sympathy, but also to
influence their minds about the figures of „police‟ that have killed thousands people in
less than a half year.
The second excerpt is “Mr. Duterte has repeatedly said he does not care
about human rights and has suggested that lawyers defending drug suspects might
also be targeted in his campaign, says the BBC's Jonathan Head”. Based on that
underlined statement, we can see that the journalist desires to present his or her
opinion through the use of passivation strategy. That statement may be formed in the
passive form in order to put the readers‟ focus not on the death toll but on the lawyers
that are trying to defend the victims. As we can see, Rodrigo is threating the lawyers
directly as soon as their effort to defend the victims. That fact may bring the readers
over to the sympathy feelings because they might think that Rodrigo‟s policy cannot
be interrupted anymore even by defending the victims in the court. On the other side,
the lawyers‟ condition here might emerge positive response from the readers for he or
she wants to assist the human rights of the victims that is no longer prevail in the war.
Moreover, the journalist‟s restatement is coming from BBC‟s Jonathan
Head where, in glancing, it may seem like a normal thing because Jonathan here is
one of informants. Nonetheless, it may critically denote the relationship between the
journalist and another member of BBC in marginalizing Rodrigo in worse way.
Jonathan‟s involvement might not be in accidental, there must be a privacy desire that
they or BBC want to achieve from that fact such as fall down Rodrigo‟s dignity in the
societies because of his hard authoritative behavior that ignores the existence of
human rights. That purpose possibly appears by keeping in mind how bad the
relationship between British and Philippines is long time ago. Thus, the journalist in
40
this sense employs passivation strategy to get the readers‟ sympathy to the lawyers
and benefits that passivation fact to propose BBC‟s hidden opinion implicitly about
Rodrigo and his policy of war on drugs.
In article 6, the researcher finds about five statements included in
passivation strategy such as “He had been kidnapped and killed by anti-drug police”
in which the journalist here utilizes the strategy of passivation in explaining the
conditions of Jee Ick-Joo before died. He or she is totally attempting to focus the
readers‟ attention to the victim in which the word of „kidnap‟ can emerge an
impression that the victim was forced to follow the police with no logical reasons.
Additionally, that word also can demonstrate the police power abuse for they take him
away without a warrant. Then, the journalist is benefiting of the condition to get rid of
the subject because he or she is not covering the subject of killings so that the readers
will know what infraction is that the police have done again. Therefore, the journalist
in this sense has denoted his or her own belief about that news so that he or she keep
on representing the conditions of the victims and the subject of the killings in the
same time in order to get rid of the police.
Second, “He has repeatedly promised to support, even pardon, any police
officers accused of unlawful killing, and been unmoved even by the clear evidence of
police involvement in the drug trade, and the murder of important drug suspects in
police custody”. Based on that excerpt, we can know that the journalist employs
passivation strategy to set the readers‟ thought out on Rodrigo‟s way of defending and
supporting the police so that they might think that Rodrigo has been unfair in applying
his policy for the unsuspecting drugs victims should be dying to bear the police power
abuse. Therefore, the journalist in this sense desires to further get rid of Rodrigo in a
41
bad representation because of his reckless decision to defend and pardon the police
guilty.
Third, the excerpt “He has ordered all tainted officers to be sent to front-
line duty in the conflict-wracked southern Philippines” denotes that the journalist uses
passivation strategy in representing the recent decision of Rodrigo in solving the
killings of South Korean Businessman. The using of passivation here is intended to
draw that there is a factor of forcefulness done by Rodrigo because all of the police
have committed with excessive power abuse. The word „send‟ here, in the other side,
is having its own meaning if it is served in the active form of sentence where the
factor of forcefulness is less felt for the actor may do it through lengthy
considerations.
But, the journalist serves that fact in the passive form of sentence to
emerge the sense of forcefulness in Rodrigo‟s decision. Additionally, the journalist
also provides passive form to stress out the firmness of Rodrigo so that the readers
may do appreciate his effort to act decisively toward power abuse that the police
officers do. Therefore, the journalist here inclines to use passive form of sentence in
order to attract the readers‟ interest about justice that Rodrigo has done to discipline
the corrupt police.
Fourth, “More than 4,000 of the deaths are blamed on unidentified hit
squads, although many of those are believed to be run by the police”. Passivation
strategy here is used to dramatize the situations and conditions of drugs operation so
that the readers tend to have pity on the victims than the subject of killings. Even
though the journalist keeps presenting the subjects on, but that may not be able to
affect the readers‟ sympathy to the victims for the journalist is structurally restating
the fact in the appropriate plot so that they will stay in focusing their attention on to
42
people that are lose their life in no legal way and valid evidence. Therefore, the way
the journalist utilizes his or her knowledge about an event showing that he or she tries
to transfer his belief to the readers so that they will be in the same line of thinking and
then that may influence the way they put Rodrigo in either good or bad representation.
Fifth, “Jee Ick-joo was seized from his home in Angeles city, near Manila,
under the pretense of a drug raid, the Department of Justice said”. Based on that
statement, we can recognize that the journalist is using passivation strategy to retell
about the first chronology of Jee Ick-Joo killing. The journalist prefers to use
passivation strategy for that may emerge strong feeling of sympathy to the victim in
the readers‟ minds rather than the feeling of anger to the subject‟s actions. As we can
see, the victim‟s condition is drawn in dramatizing description in which he or she
provides the location of him and the reason of his arrest. Passivation strategy is
usually used to attract the readers‟ interest, attention or perhaps sympathy because the
usage of passivation aims to focus the readers‟ on the condition of the victim. Thus,
Jee Ick-Joo‟s demise here is utilized not only to attract the readers‟ interest, but also to
enrich the readers‟ information about common infraction that usually happen in police
sphere.
In article 7, the researcher finds one statement used passivation strategy is
“… police were only authorized to open fire when threatened by suspects”. Based on
that statement, the journalist employs passivation strategy in which he or she wants to
draw a grievance to the police. Passivation strategy is used here not to get the readers‟
sympathy to the police but to influence their minds about “how come they break
Rodrigo‟s credence to them” by reminding Rodrigo‟s statement in his campaign. But,
that may also be used to get the rid of Rodrigo. It is because Rodrigo is always in the
police side when the other complaint about the police power abuse in drug operation.
43
Therefore, the journalist here desires to denote his or her opinion obviously about the
existence of justice in Philippines which cannot be gotten again until the killings of
South Korean Businessman becoming a strong hit to the police and especially to
Rodrigo.
3.1.1.1.2 Nominalization
Nominalization is a strategy not only to change the form of verb into noun
to appear intensifier impression of an action, but also to disappear or reduce the role
of the subject from an event, in the other side (Fowler Rogert et al cited on Eriyanto,
2001). The using the nominalization strategy can be seen in article 1 in the statement
“…the killings of drug suspects were lawful if the police acted in self-defense.”. As
we can see, the subject of killings is hidden by the journalist in order to stress out that
the killings of drugs suspects in the society is not something new and law violence
anymore. Human rights do no longer exist in Philippines for Mr. President himself has
officially legalized the death of drug suspects.
However, the journalist is not intensively meant to hide the subject and
control the readers‟ minds about the killings because he or she has intentionally
represented the subject clearly as short as after disappearance them. That strategy is
actually used to avoid repetition on providing the subjects in one sentence, absolve the
police from the accusation of power abuse, and emerge an impression that Rodrigo is
really such a firm president because he do appreciate the police hard work in war on
drug so that he officially gives such a „prerogative‟ to them. Thus, nominalization
strategy is not always utilized by the journalist to disappear or even reduce the role of
the subject because it can be used to bring out the real journalist‟ hidden message or
thought that she or he got from his or her experience and believe of drug war
phenomenon.
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3.1.1.2 Inclusion
Like exclusion, inclusion is also included in microstructures element, but it describe
about how an actor or a group is represented in a discourse. There are seven kinds of
inclusions, yet the researcher just employs five of them because they are involved in the
journalist‟s statements.
3.1.1.2.1 Abstraction
Abstraction is one of discourse elements that talk about an information of
an event or incident which is still in abstract gist. That is usually used to present
another side of the information so that that may appear a particular meaning in the
readers‟ or hearers‟ minds about the information. In the BBC news coverage, the
researcher finds some statements that consist of abstraction meaning such in article 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. In article 1 and 2, the using of abstraction strategy is detected in the
excerpt “human rights groups estimate than more than 1,000 people were killed with
no legal process.” and According to the police more than 1,900 people have been
killed.”
The abstraction strategy can be seen on the word „estimate than more than
…‟ The word „estimate‟ means that to guess the cost, value, etc. of something
(Cambridge Advance Learner‟s Dictionary 3th
) A. It means that the journalist perhaps
has still no complete information yet about the victims. As aforementioned above,
abstraction strategy may form the readers‟ own estimation about the number of
victims. The word „more‟ also shows a larger or extra number or amount of
something. Therefore, abstraction here is used not only to cover the journalist‟s lack
of information, but also to manipulate the readers‟ thought about the number of
victims for they will draw big amount of victims in their minds, so that that may assist
45
the journalist to stick a particular thought in the way they value Rodrigo and his
policy of war on drug.
In article 3, we can see the using of abstraction strategy in the statement
“Hundreds of alleged dealers have been killed …” The BBC journalist employs
abstraction and passivation strategy to draw the situation of the war on drugs.
Abstraction strategy can be seen on the way the journalist signs the number of death
with the word „hundred‟. In glancing, that word may seem to be a certainty of the sum
of the victims, but that word is actually showing the journalist‟s lack in collecting the
information. The word hundred denotes that the number of the victims is still in
prediction for there has no exact information yet about the number of death toll.
In article 4, there is a statement that consist of abstraction strategy is “Mr.
Duterte's drugs war has caused thousands of extrajudicial killings”. Leeuwen‟s
abstraction can be recognized on the words „thousands of extrajudicial killings‟. Like
the previous analysis about abstraction, the journalist ponders to present abstract fact
where it can demonstrate the limited information that the journalist has. Abstraction
strategy is also used to make the readers think exaggeratedly about the exact number
of the death toll involved in extrajudicial killings. In addition, the use of abstraction
strategy here may affect the readers‟ belief or opinion about the dereliction of Rodrigo
in controlling the process of drug operation so that many people are died on no legal
process. Therefore, the journalist‟s strategy of abstraction here is not only showing his
or her lack information or knowledge about the war but also denoting the police
power abuse that may be beyond Rodrigo‟s knowledge or monitor where that might
put Rodrigo in worse representation.
In article 5, the researcher discovers two journalist‟s statement used
abstraction strategy such as “… a wave of unlawful killings claiming more than 5,000
46
lives across the country …". The journalist employs abstraction strategy where he or
she does not show the exact number of unlawful killings in the related news coverage.
The journalist provides his or her prediction about the total of the unlawful killings in
the words „a wave of unlawful killings‟ in which the word „wave‟ here expresses a
larger number of events of a similar, often bad, type, happening within the same
period (Cambridge Dictionary, 3th
Eds.).
That word here is such a figurative language because the journalist is using
that to draw his or her supposition about how many alleged drugs suspects are died in
the drugs operation. Either the police or contract killers shoot those people down.
Hence, by using abstraction strategy, the journalist can be keeping representing the
news swiftly without has no valid prove. And “Nearly 6,000 people are said to have
been killed by police …” in which the word „nearly‟ can be considered as a factor of
abstraction because the journalist does not provide the precise number of the death
toll. The journalist may intentionally do that to show his or her lack of information or
hide the fact to get the readers‟ interest in. Nevertheless, Leeuwen believes that that
strategy is usually used by journalists or media for they have not enough proof about
an action or condition.
In article 6, the excerpt “More than 4,000 of the deaths are blamed on
unidentified hit squads …” involved in abstraction strategy because the way the
journalist utilizes the word „more‟ to estimate the exact number of the death toll in the
drugs operation. On the other hand, that might also prompt the readers to believe that
the number of the victims as many as they think. Abstraction strategy is actually
assisting the journalist in presenting the news and that strategy also seems like to be
the journalist‟s way to manipulate the number of death. Though, he or she has
provided the number of game is 4.000 of death, yet that may not automatically control
47
the readers‟ opinions about the number of victims. They will keep on thinking
exaggeratedly about the rate of the death.
3.1.1.2.2 Categorization
Categorization is one of journalists‟ strategies in news coverage in
representing the actor or subject of an action based on religion, physical appearances,
status, and so on. Those may be applied based on the journalists‟ preference. It is
because those may affect the meaning of the information, so that the journalists
commonly use categorization to transfer their basic thoughts of the actor or subject
where that may also denote the ideology of the media.
Then, the using of categorization strategy can be seen in article 2, in the
excerpt “Maria and her husband come from an impoverished neighborhood of
Manila and had no regular income before agreeing to become contract killers.”
which can be seen on the way he or she provides Maria‟s social and economic status.
From those underlining words, the journalist has denotes obviously the condition of
Maria and her husband before joining as contract killers. Moreover, representing
someone‟s condition especially on social and economic status may show how the
journalist or the media is intend to attract the readers‟ interest because those statuses
are usually being a big encouragement to someone in committing a crime or breaking
the law.
As we know, some media or journalists are usually covering someone‟s
social or economic status as the main reason of committing a crime in the society.
They believe that the readers or the hearers will be more interested in reading or
hearing that kind of news coverage. Thus, the journalist in this sense here
intentionally mentions Maria‟s social and economic status before and after joining the
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police officer in order to stress out how Philippines create contract killing to become
one of their way to solve the problems of poverty so that it can decrease poverty rate
significantly from a couple years.
And in the excerpt “Nearly all those whose bloodied bodies are
discovered every night in the slums of Manila and other cities are the poor - pedicab
drivers, casual labourers, the unemployed”. Characterization can be seen on the way
the journalist mentions the status of the death toll. By mentioning their status, the
journalist attempt to build more sense of bleeding heart because most of identified
victims are coming from the circle of poor societies. Therefore, the journalist is
representing the condition and identity of the victims in order to denote how
aggressive drug war is so that the police and perhaps the others citizen killed the drug
suspects heartlessly.
3.1.1.2.3 Determination
Determination is one of discourse elements that is usually used by
journalists to make the actors or subject become anonymous. According to van
Leeuwen, journalists often employ anonymous in news coverage because they did not
get valid evidence yet about the actor or subject of the information. Additionally,
there is also anxiety structural that will be appeared as long as they mention the
category of the subject or actor clearly. In the BBC News coverage, the researcher
finds one statement in article 2 presented by using determination “Nearly all those
whose bloodied bodies are discovered every night in the slums of Manila …”
Determination strategy can be seen on the information of „nearly all those
whose bloodied bodies‟. As we know, the journalist here is attempting to describe the
situation and condition of drug suspects in war on drug. However, the aforementioned
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information may not be considered as the hint of the number of deaths related war on
drug. It is because those victims are not confirmed yet as the death tolls of drug
suspects. Those may be involved in other crime such as robbery. Thus, the using of
determination in this sense can be one of the journalist‟s strategies to manipulate the
readers‟ minds about the latest situation and condition, so that they will think
exaggeratedly about Rodrigo‟s war on drug which brings unexpected result (the sharp
rise in deaths) in the society. That strategy also assists the journalist well in covering
his or her lack of information up related to war on drug.
3.1.1.2.4 Objectivity
Objectivity is one of discourse elements that talk about an information of
an event or incident which is presenting concrete gist. That is usually used to present
unequivocal information so that that may not appear another meaning in the readers‟
or hearers‟ minds about the information. In the BBC News articles, the researcher
gets one excerpt involved in objectivity strategy is “He has listed 150
senior officials, officers and judges linked to the trade. Five police generals, he
says, are kingpins of the business.” The journalist uses objectivity strategy in which
he or she denotes a number of members of government that deal with drugs trade
based on Rodrigo‟s listed. Providing the exact number of drugs suspects
automatically avoid the readers from an incomplete information. Besides, the readers
also are able to know how miserable those members of government because they has
done with power abuses for a long time until Rodrigo became a president.
In the other side, the journalist also presents the violence done by the
police generals in which they are the kingpins of drugs trade. The word kingpin in
Cambridge dictionary itself means the most important person within a particular
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organization. In Indonesia language, kingpin itself means gembong. It means that
those five police general are really contravening the law and perhaps the rule on
police domain. Furthermore, those facts are intentionally presented by the journalist in
order to be more marginalization the police because they are commanded to extirpate
the drugs access but most of them are involving in drugs trade and being the kingpins
of that. On the other side, those facts also obviously denotes that the journalist is
standing out for Rodrigo for he has uncovered the crime in the police sphere and show
his seriousness in eradicating drugs in Philippines.
3.1.1.2.5 Association
Association is discourse element that is often used to denote the relation
between the social actors and dominate group of people formed by the journalists.
That strategy is usually utilized to create a huge meaning of particular news coverage.
It is because the readers or hearers will draw an exaggerate imagination about what
the journalists state in the press, and connect that in accordance with imaginary to a
broad community. The researcher finds an association strategy applied in the excerpt
in article 2 “They blamed the “shabu” scourge for rising crime and for destroying
lives, although some worried that the campaign was getting out of hand, that innocent
victims were being caught up in it”.
The words innocent victims here become the focus of this analysis for the
researcher believes that those words are used to demonstrate most of the victims are
coming from the poorest citizens that may be related to unlawful killings. As we
know, the word innocent itself refers to a person who is not guilty of a particular
crime or having no knowledge of unpleasant and evil things in life. In glancing, the
journalist seems like putting an effort to present the information in a specific way.
However, the information of innocent victims provided by the journalist are here
51
intentionally associated and connected implicitly to other innocent victims that were
died because of the using/ownership of drug especially shabu.
It is because those words are too common to send a specific hint or effect
of a drug problem happened in Philippines. Additionally, the rising of crime and lives
destroyed by shabu are also occurred in every country which cause the death of
innocent victims too. Thus, the using of association strategy in this sense denotes that
the death of innocent victims may not be able to be considered as the central problem
in Philippines at the time, but common problem faced by other countries, so that the
readers may appear a huge meaning in their thoughts about those victims, and draw a
connection between that problem with the same problem happened in other countries.
That is the way the journalist builds a different representation of the death, and that
may show the way the journalist beholds a particular problem by using his or her
knowledge. Therefore, he or she may implicitly affect the readers‟ way of thinking
about the death in drug operation by representing that in a general point of view.
3.1.1.3 Transitive
Transitive or transitivity model in a discourse can be considered as an element which
demonstrates the relationship of cause effect of an event or incident. There will be a clear
explanation of the relation of one thing to another so that that will lead the readers to the
subject or actor of an action and the object who get the effect of that action. Transitivity
model, in BBC News article, can be found in article 1, 2, 3, and 6. In article 1, the using of
transitive form can be seen in the excerpt “He has previously urged citizens to shoot and kill
drug dealers who resisted arrest, and reiterated that the killings of drug suspects were lawful
if the police acted in self-defense.”
The journalist here employs transitivity by providing active sentence in order to bring
the subject, Rodrigo, on the bad assessment because he himself orders his folks to participate
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in shooting the „drugs suspects‟ down. Rodrigo‟s statement may emerge controversy in the
others‟ minds because citizens have no exact knowledge and information about who the real
drug users or pushers are based on the black list on the police data. They may just shoot
„men‟ that they believe as drug users and dealers. Then, they succeed in raising the rate of
death related unlawful killings in Philippines. Hence, the journalist is aiming to restate
Rodrigo‟s utterances in active sentence in order to demonstrate who the real main actor is that
has appeared the term of extrajudicial killings.
In article 2, the researcher finds three journalist‟s statements utilized transitivity
model. First, in the excerpt”… they can get close to their victims without arousing the same
suspicion a man would”, the journalist shows what the cause effect of selecting those women.
In the journalist‟s description, he or she has obviously denoted why those women are chosen
and valued by the subject. That description may also implicitly demonstrate the refusal of
gender bias because those women are able to be believed to do men‟ jobs as well as what men
do. Therefore, either transitive or intransitive strategy in the sense here can be used to build
one new thought in the readers‟ minds about the concept of gender bias which believes that
women are always left behind the men.
Second, based on the statement “I cannot surrender, because if I do the police will
probably kill me”, the journalist here is attempting to show the cause effect of Roger‟s refusal
to hand himself over to the police. It can be seen through Fowler‟s et al strategy of
transitivity. The journalist explicitly denotes that Roger is quite aware of the consequences he
would receive if he came to the police and surrendered. By using transitivity strategy, the
journalist is able to inform the readers that even though the drugs suspects have
acknowledged their fault using drugs, but the police cannot even receive their pardon. They
will keep killing them heartlessly.
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As we know, Rodrigo has conveyed the rule of killings the suspects in which the
police are allowed to kill the drugs suspects if they fight back. But, in that Roger‟s admission,
we can see that the police are not treating the drugs suspects as like as what the president
command. That action may ignite public assumption about power abuse done by the police,
then. Therefore, Roger‟s acknowledgement here directly assists the journalist in showing and
representing the police in a bad representation because his statement can be a new evidence of
police power abuse during the drug operation.
The last, the statement “But her boss has threatened to kill anyone who leaves the
team” has shown that the journalist utilizes transitivity strategy that denote the condition of
Maria in joining the contract killing team. Based on that statement, the journalist implicitly
may denote some questions in the readers‟ minds such as why are the contracts killings team
still surviving until now? What are the reasons that make them still hold out? How are their
life and their family going on when they keep on their job as contract killer? Those questions
may emerge automatically when the journalist proposes other facts of contract killings system
made by the police officer.
In article 3, the using of transitivity strategy can be seen in the excerpt“… Mr. Duterte
allowed to police to shoot them on sight”. The journalist here employs transitivity strategy to
describe clearly about the cause of the increase of the death race. Based on that excerpt, we
can analyze that the words „shoot them on sight‟ seems like to be a lawful action of the police
to keep shooting the „drug suspects‟ down as soon as they meet. It means that the police no
need to wait for their surrender because they will be killed as soon as possible.
In article 6, the using of transitivity strategy can obviously be seen on the statement
“He has repeatedly promised to support, even pardon, any police officers accused of unlawful
killing, and been unmoved even by the clear evidence of police involvement in the drug trade,
54
and the murder of important drug suspects in police custody”. Transitivity strategy can be
seen on the way the journalist denotes obviously the cause of the increasing of death toll.
Defending and pardoning the police power abuse has directly been done by Rodrigo where
that may possibly prompt the police to keep staying in their power abuse. Additionally, that
also directly shows that the term of justice does no longer exist in political domain because
the ruler of the country is even supporting infractions done by the police.
The using of transitivity strategy also can be seen on the statement “But the shocking
murder of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo last October has forced Mr. Duterte to
acknowledge that the Philippines National Police are too tainted to continue running the anti-
drugs campaign” that has clearly shown the cause effect of dissolving action of drug
operation for a while. In the fact that that statement has obviously demonstrated that Rodrigo
will end the war for a while, when he has been aware of the police power abuse that has been
out of the track. That statement also explicitly show that the journalist sides with Rodrigo for
his or her restating statement seems like to be a strong slap for the Philippines National Police
which is command to take over the operation of war on drugs. Thus, the journalist in this
sense is trying to defend the innocent victim by getting rid of the police on worse matter and
denote the positive side of Rodrigo officially defending Ick-Joo.
3.1.1.4 Intransitive
Intransitive is another model of discourse which demonstrates unclearly relationship
between the cause and the effect of an action. It is because there is no distinctive explanation
about who the actor is that become the cause of an action, what the factor is that can be
considered as the cause of an action, what the effect is, or who the object is that get the effect
of the actor‟s action. In the BBC News articles, the researcher gets some statements involved
in intransitive model such as in article 2 and 6.
55
In article 2, there are two statements included in intransitive model. First, “She is part
of a hit team that includes three women, who are valued …” which shows that the journalist
describes the total number of women contract killer by not showing who the subject/s is/are
that select and value them as a contract killer. Fowler‟s et al, 1979, model may seem quite as
same as Leeuwen‟s model about passivation, but they tend to focus on the way journalist or
media represents the relationship of cause effect in the news in the unclear description for
there has not been associated about who the subject that cause an action or who or what
become the effect of an action (Eriyanto, 2001). As we can see, the journalist here is not
providing the subject who selects and values those women so that the readers may question
“who the subject/s is/are that caused the unlawful killings in war on drugs”.
Second, the journalist applies intransitive model in the excerpt “… she and her
husband had been told their safe house had been exposed”. In that statement, the journalist is
not providing who the subject/s is/are that has put Maria and her husband in a danger because
of the subject‟s/‟ information. Furthermore, the journalist‟s strategy of writing here may be
considered as the way he or she wants to focus the readers‟ attention on to Maria and her
husband condition while become the police officer contract killer. There are two possibility
of the journalist‟s choice in using intransitive strategy, first he or she does not know exactly
who the subject that caused Maria and her husband must remove in hurry, and second, the
journalist may intentionally not represent the subject in order to keep the readers in a big
curiosity so that they will form their own prediction to the subject.
In article 6, the using of intransitive model can be seen on “… anti-drug units would
be dissolved”. The journalist here has denoted that he or she uses Fowler‟s intransitive
strategy in which that can be known on the unclear description that the journalist represents
in that statement. The statement of „anti-drug units would be dissolved‟ is explicitly showing
no reason actions because the journalist does not provide the motive of dissolving it. Then,
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that might appear gaps in the readers‟ mind because they do not know what factor that make
them dissolved it, why that factor can affect the work of it, and how serious are that reasons
so that the police chief must dissolve it. Those gaps are probably coming up to the readers‟
minds as long as the journalist does not describe the cause of that action. However, that may
be the journalist‟s plan to attract the readers to keep looking for the information by reading
the whole report.
3.1.1.5 Disclaimer
Disclaimer, according to Cambridge Dictionary, is a formal statement saying that you
are not legally responsible for something. In the BBC News articles, the researcher finds the
using of disclaimer in the excerpt "Our punishments have to be in accordance with our law
and with national and international standards," said Slamet Pribadi”. Slamet Pribadi‟s
statement can be considered as a disclaimer statement because he explicitly rejects Waseso‟s
idea about applying drug war in Indonesia. Slamet Pribadi‟s refusal here is obviously
denoting that he gives a big honor to the law either national or international made together in
a deliberation so that he tends to choose obey the law. Therefore, a disclaimer statement in
this excerpt is used to insist that law is something legal that should be obeyed by all
component of society.
3.1.1.6 Number of game
Number of game is a situation where the most important factor is how many of a
particular thing there are, especially when we disapprove of this. The using of number of
game can be found on some statements in the journalist‟s news coverage such as in article 1
and 6. In article 1, the researcher finds number of game in the statement “… a total of 1,916
deaths had been recorded during the crackdown, 756 of which were during police
operations”. By showing the exact number of death toll, the journalist intends to denote that
how severe the war on drugs is since it was run on July, 2016. Number of game is also
57
intentionally supplied in order to form Rodrigo‟s bad representation because that may prompt
the readers to send more criticism about his policy which has caused a number of deaths in
Philippines. However, the journalist‟s restatement “756 of which were during police
operations” is intentionally asserting to draw a temporary conclusion that the rest of the death
toll may be considered as unlawful killings in which they were shooting down for no valid
evidences.
Second, the using of the number of game is found in the excerpt “300 police officers
were suspected to be involved in the drugs trade…” The journalist here provides the number
of game in order to denote the amount of drug suspected which come from police officers
who are officially being responsible for drug war. Providing the number of police officers
involved in drugs trade may assist the journalist to create such a particular representation of
police officers. It is because those facts may assert that citizens are not the only one factor
that should take responsible for every crime action in the society for even the protectors or
securities of the country are also „participated‟ in gaining crime.
However, that fact also can appear a positive impact to the representation of Rodrigo.
It is because that may stimulate the readers to think logically about the benefit of war on drug
in which that is not only discipline the citizens, but also every security of the country,
especially police officer that automatically get in touch with citizens. Therefore, the journalist
in this sense shows that he or she is not always showing a bad press of Rodrigo‟s war on
drug, but also an attempt to present a new shocking fact about police officers that even people
did not know, so that it will affect the way people think about police.
Third, the researcher finds the number of game in the excerpt “Nearly 700,000 drug
users and peddlers have turned themselves in since the launch of the campaign” The
journalist here employs the number of game in order to stress the increasing of the amount of
drug users and peddles which will lead us to the journalist‟s way of thinking of the war.
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However, providing and defining the number of game is here actually not only used to
present the latest information, but also to denote implicitly the journalist‟s acknowledgement
on Rodrigo‟s hard policy that at least bring a positive result by the admission of crime (the
using/ownership of drug), so that the police do not need to take out a shot to paralyze the
drug suspects.
In article 6, number of game is also exist in the excerpt “More than 4,000 of the
deaths …” where the journalist intentionally provides the amount of death tolls in order to
create a bad representation of Rodrigo. It is because Rodrigo‟s policy has succeeded gaining
the amount of death rate less than a half of year. Additionally, most of death is coming from
unidentified hit squad, so that people may judge Rodrigo in a bad way for he cannot handle
the unlawful killings properly. Thus, the journalist in this sense employs the strategy of
number of game to affect the readers‟ way of thinking about war on drug, so that they will
automatically put themselves in the contra sides of Rodrigo‟s policy which brings anxiety in
the society and bad results emerged by unlawful killings.
3.1.1.7 Metaphor
Metaphor is an expression or writing strategy used figurative language that describe a
person or subject in a literary way by referring to something considered to have similar
characteristics to the person or object someone is trying to explain. In journalistic, metaphor
is usually used to lead the readers to get the point of a particular meaning in a text. A
particular metaphor is often utilized by journalists as the base of thinking, the reasons of an
argument or an idea that journalists desire to convey to the public, either hearers or readers.
In one of BBC News coverage, the researcher finds a statement used metaphor expression is
“The rights group said there appeared to be financial incentives for the killings, with one
officer claiming they were given an "under the table" payment for each death, as well as
payments from some funeral homes”.
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In that excerpt, we can see and know that the journalist employs metaphor expression
in drawing a hint of illegal action in political domain called bribery. The words “under the
table” based on Cambridge dictionary means that something done under the table is a secret
or hidden action, where that meaning can lead us to the main point of the journalist‟s thinking
that the officers were bribed to keep Rodrigo‟s policy running smoothly. It is because they
were paid for killing people who are suspected as drug user or dealer though they still have
no valid data of the exact suspected drug dealer or user that are targeted.
The using of metaphor expression is here also used to present politicians, such as
police officers in abstract mode that may strength people‟ belief about them that are usually
involved in bribery. Thus, the using of metaphor expression in this sense is used to send the
hidden messages implicitly to the readers so that they will understand the message clearly.
3.1.1.8 Graphic
Graphic is one of discourse element in Van Dijk‟s microstructures that is usually used
to investigate some parts in a text, which are stressed intentionally by the journalist to appear
a particular meaning. The using of graphic in a text can be identified by looking at the way
the journalist uses bold, italic, underline, graph, table, picture, and so on. Those may assist
the journalist in conveying a significant meaning to the readers. Additionally, the using of
number is also being a supporting part for journalist to persuade the readers about the truth of
a report. In the BBC news article, the researcher finds the using of graphic in article 2, 4, 5, 6,
and 7.
In article 2, graphic is found in the excerpt “Since President Duterte was elected, and
urged citizens and police to kill drug dealers …” At glance, we can see that the journalist
employs bold and underline to tell about the result of president election. However, he or she
is here actually desire to stress a particular meaning such as his or her disagreement of the
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result of president election in Philippines. It is because Duterte has brought significant
number of bad impact in the society because of his policy of war on drug. For instance, rising
of the number of death, the increasing of abuse of police power, and man‟s psychological
disturbance because of drug operation are bad impacts that Filipinos are facing now.
Drug operation may be a good alternative to eradicate the access of drug in
Philippines. Those of Rodrigo‟s supporters also demand him to lunch that policy. But, the
journalist in this sense may implicitly assert that Rodrigo‟s policy might be able to run
smoothly without appearing such nasty impacts to who do not belong to his supporters. Thus,
the using of graphic can be considered as the journalist‟s trick to send his or her own opinion
about Rodrigo and his policy that have brought such a tension along, either to Filipinos or
other citizens who are concerned for some impacts appeared because of war on drug, lunched
by Rodrigo.
Second, the researcher finds graphic in the excerpt “What has provoked the rough-
tongued president to unleash this merciless campaign …” The journalist here uses bold and
underline as the graphic. Based on those words, we can analyze that the journalist attempts to
convey his or her belief about Rodrigo, who is used to do frontal comments to whoever he
thinks that is in different lines of thinking with him. For example, Rodrigo is never hesitant to
deliver his opinion publicly about critical statements come to him about his policy of war on
drug, such as when he said President Barrack Obama is a son of whore. The journalist may
think that Rodrigo, as a president of the country, should put himself in a best manner, so that
people may give an enormous honored to him
Moreover, BBC journalist in this sense is confident to present those words for he or
she may have some evidences, such as the example aforementioned, which can strengthen his
or her statement. By stating Rodrigo in that way, the journalist has explicitly denoted that he
or she wants to get rid of Rodrigo in a bad representation. It is because those words may
61
hypnotize the readers‟ minds about the figure of Rodrigo in the real life. Thus, the using of
graphic followed by former evidences may help the journalist to reach his or her goals to put
Rodrigo in a bad side of representation.
Third, the utilizing of graphic is found in the excerpt “He has listed 150
senior officials, officers and judges linked to the trade”. Like the previous words, the
journalist here not only gives bold sign, but also makes underline at those words. Then, those
signs are used to stress a particular meaning that the journalist wants to convey. For example,
we know that those words refer to people who have big responsibility to the country. But, the
current fact has demonstrated that they are involved in drug trade. Thus, the journalist here
tries to take a benefit from both the status of those suspects and the fact to prove the existence
of law upholder power abuse, where it can form a bad representation on those suspects and
get rid of them in the Filipinos‟ view, later.
The last, the researcher notices the using of graphic in the excerpt “According to the
police more than 1,900 people have been killed.” At that information, we can see that the
journalist attempts to stress out the number of death tolls by giving bold and underline.
Emphasizing the number of death tolls here is not only as the standard of presenting news for
journalist, but also as a strategy to persuade the readers that those amount of victims are the
latest fact they get from drug operation. In addition, stressing the amount of people killed can
be also considered as the way to get the readers‟ interest for the journalist believes that the
utilizing of number may appear such a validity suspicion in the readers‟ minds, so that they
may believe at what the journalist present in the article. Therefore, the journalist here uses
graphic in presenting the number of victims in order to get the readers‟ interest in that fact,
convince them about the increasing of death tolls, and then their beliefs may lead them to
accuse Rodrigo who call for drug war. Those are the way the journalist creates a bad
representation on Rodrigo.
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In the article 4, the researcher finds the using of graphic in the excerpt “... Mr. Duterte
used insulting language to refer to the US president.” As we can see, the journalist employs
double graphics in his or her statement, bold and underline. The utilizing of graphic here
refers to Rodrigo‟s character, in which he often reacts to unpleasant things with frontal form
of language that may be considered as coarse words. Furthermore, the phrase „insulting
language‟ is used to remind the readers about what Rodrigo had done before when remarking
on Obama‟s comment on Rodrigo‟s policy of war on drug. That also may become the
journalist‟s strategy to stress out the meaning of polite behavior that Rodrigo is still lack of,
so that the readers may think that as a president, Rodrigo, should watch every single word
that he wants to convey. Thus, the journalist here may potentially create another bad
representation of Rodrigo by providing his bad side.
In the article 5, the using of graphic are found in the excerpt “It is the first such
admission he has made since becoming president in June …” The journalist employs graphic
here to emphasize Rodrigo‟s position in political domain and his action when he becomes a
president. After being a president of Philippines, Rodrigo may be more famous than before
because of his controversial policy. However, his position now or his victory in presidential
election has indirectly emerged such a refusal for some group of people, for they may highly
consider about his drug war policy that he launch. Bold and italic mark also implicitly draws
the journalist‟s opinion about Rodrigo. He or she may think that being the leader of the
country may assist Rodrigo well in continuing his ambition in fighting against crime in
Philippines. In addition, Rodrigo‟s ambition is actually sounds good to create the feeling of
peacefulness in the society, yet he keeps on treating criminalist rudely so that other people
may reject his action. In short, the researcher believes that journalist attempts to form
Rodrigo‟s bad representation through his admission on the past time and contradictory action
in the present time, so that he or she may get the readers‟ support to drag him in a bad sight.
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Second, the journalist employs graphic in the excerpt “Mr. Duterte was speaking to
business leaders …” BBC journalist here is doing stress on the name of the president of
Philippines. The researcher thinks that he or she may emphasize Rodrigo‟s name in order to
represent and clarify the main actor on his or her news coverage which has revealed horrified
fact. In addition, the journalist also wants to get the readers‟ focus on the main actor, so that
he or she will be easier to drag the readers‟ thought down on the core of the text.
Third, the utilizing of graphic is found in the excerpt “It is the latest in a series of
controversial and sometimes contradictory comments by Mr. Duterte” and “Blood on his
hands”. Based on that graphic, we can see that there is a message that the journalist wants to
talk about. He or she is here in touch with another fact that makes Rodrigo being considered
as controversial president with his hard line policy. As we know, Rodrigo is often sending
controversial and sometimes contradictory comments during his leadership as president. One
of them is the statement of blood on his hand.
When we understand that statement with Van Dijk‟s graphic, we can see that the BBC
journalist desires to get rid of Rodrigo intentionally. It is because that statement may change
the readers‟ minds about the figure of Rodrigo which may be regarded as an authoritarian
ruler. Blood on his hand may denote explicitly that Rodrigo is not totally in the line with the
law of humanity which confines somebody‟s activity or action to the others. According to
Rodrigo‟s contradictory statement, the journalist demonstrates some implicit messages such
as Rodrigo is a person with a big wary of giving mercy to someone‟s who is committed with
crime, his firmness is often followed by violence, or Rodrigo has a real bad temper. Those
messages possibly will come along in the readers‟ minds as long as the journalist put his or
her strategy of words stressing well, so that the aimed can be achieved by the readers. Thus,
the using of graphic in this part takes a big role in persuading the readers about the
journalist‟s goals, putting Rodrigo in a bad representation.
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Fourth, the researcher notices the existence of graphic strategy in the excerpt “Nearly
6,000 people are said to have been killed by police, vigilantes and mercenaries…” The
journalist here is intentionally giving bold and underline on those words in order to
emphasize the meaning. Based on Cambridge dictionary, vigilante is a person who tries in an
unofficial way to prevent crime or to catch and punish someone who has committed a crime.
While mercenary is a soldier who fights for any country or group that pays them. From those
literary meaning, we can see that they are coming from unofficial Philippines‟ employee that
also involve themselves in drug operation.
What the journalist desires to stress is how come Rodrigo let those groups merge with
the police to eradicate drug access in Philippines. The journalist may believe that those
groups are not having the exact or validity lists of drug suspect. It is because they are only
rent to paralyze the drug suspects with no authority to kill them. However, the fact in the field
has shown that they are involved in the killings of the drug suspects. It means that they have
done something beyond their authority as a group payment. As we know that, Rodrigo just
allows the police to kill the suspected drug user or peddler as self-defense.
The last, “He has expressed few regrets about the policy, once saying: “Hitler
massacred three millions Jews … There’s three million drug addicts. I’d happy to slaughter
them” The journalist here uses graphic on those words in order to giving a stress to
Rodrigo‟s comment about his policy. Emphasizing on those words is intended to express the
journalist‟s opinion about Rodrigo implicitly such as Rodrigo‟s ambition to end the spreading
of drugs and create peacefulness in Philippines has brought him to lunch his hard line policy
with no mercy to others. He is not even hesitant to deliver his remark publicly in which that
may appear a lot of critical comments or warding. Moreover, stressing on those words may
also become the journalist‟s aimed to create Rodrigo‟s bad representation. It is because the
readers may consider whether keep on supporting Rodrigo‟s decision or not after knowing
65
Rodrigo‟s controversial remark on the BBC report. Thus, the journalist here employs graphic
strategy to assist him or her to send his or her opinion about Rodrigo‟s comment in the midst
of rejection on war on drug.
In the article 6, the utilizing of graphic is found in the excerpt “But the shocking
murder of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-Joo last October…” BBC journalist uses
graphic here to emphasize the position of the object that was died in the drug operation. Jee
Ick-Joo is here a dead victim of police power abuse in the war on drug. He was killed by the
police with illegal warrant. Then, the stressing in the words „South Korean businessman‟ may
intentionally be shown to appear the sense of sympathy and anxiety in the readers‟ minds.
The sympathy feeling may emerge because they have mercy on Jee Ick-Joo as one of the
victims of unlawful killing. While the anxiety feeling may emerge for they think that it may
cause such a strained situation with the relationship of Philippines and South Korea. Thus, the
journalist in this sense employs graphic to get the readers‟ sympathy, and get rid of Rodrigo
that proposes his hard line policy that has brought a serious bad impact to both the society
and the country.
In the article 7, “The rights group also said in a report that the killings may constitute
“crimes against humanity”.” BBC journalist gives a stress in the words „in a report‟ by using
bold sign in order to demonstrate that the rights group has its own evidence to defy Rodrigo‟s
policy which has caused a lot of deaths in drug operation. In addition, we can also see
obviously that the journalist here may stand up for the rights group in conveying their refusal
opinion toward war on drug, because Rodrigo‟s drug war actually breaks the law of
humanity. Thus, the utilizing of graphic here can be considered as the journalist‟s strategy to
implicitly attract the readers‟ interest to find out more about the bad results in drug war, so
they may also blame Rodrigo for his decision-making that contravene law and cause a lot of
66
demises. And that strategy may automatically help the journalist to build Rodrigo‟s bad
representation.
Those analyses above are found in the BBC News coverage. The researcher here
desires to provide another analysis from Rodrigo‟s interview, so that we may see how
Rodrigo creates his own presentation through his interview with Aljazeera. The analyses are
as follows: In the excerpt number 1, the researcher notices that Rodrigo has indirectly used
transitivity strategy in explaining the formation of his character. He provides the reasons why
he can be judged as an authoritarian leader. As we can see, Rodrigo here not only wants to
describe about the formation of his character, but also attempts to defend himself from
others‟ critical comments about his character. It is because he explains clearly and publicly
about the main factor that forms his character, the sphere of his life. Thus, the existence of
transitivity strategy in this sense is quite help Rodrigo in describing the reason of his
authoritarian character, so that he may get toleration from some critics who question about
his controversial character.
In the data utterance number 2, Rodrigo is still utilizing transitivity in explaining his
reasons of lunching war on drug. Based on the data, Rodrigo has obviously described why he
must launch his controversial policy that should hurt people in the practice. Rodrigo in this
sense has realized the threat that Filipinos may get or face if he did not take a serious action
on stopping drug users or peddlers. Thus, the existence of transitive strategy here may assist
Rodrigo to draw a distinct explanation about his decision on drug war, so that it may be able
to make the readers or the hearers comprehend the decision he make and then support his
policy of war on drug .
Based on the third excerpt in the table, the researcher finds that Rodrigo employs his
power to make a disclaimer. He officially denotes his defense toward people‟ judgments on
the way Rodrigo threat the criminalist. In addition, people may think that Rodrigo‟s policy of
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war on drug can be considered as a serious threat to drug suspects because he says he will kill
them. However, that even cannot be called as a threat for there is no law that may ban
Rodrigo to threat the drug suspects with oral context. Thus, disclaimer strategy here helps
Rodrigo in clarifying misconceptions that appear in the society because of the way he threat
the drug suspects.
In the data utterance number 4, the researcher finds that Rodrigo provides another
reason of his controversial decision on launching drug war by using transitive strategy. This
data is actually quite related to the data number 2, where Rodrigo explains the main reason of
him in taking war on drug as an alternative way to eradicate the access of drug in Philippines.
Moreover, Rodrigo‟s explanation here denotes that he has predicted the result beforehand that
may appear later because of the abuse of drug in the society. His statement may also
automatically create his good representation in the readers‟ or hearers‟ minds, for people may
consider Rodrigo‟s decision as the right action that should be took by a leader of the country.
That is the way Rodrigo get people‟ attention and form his own representation, therefore.
In the data utterance number 5, the researcher notices that there is a transitive strategy
in Rodrigo‟s statement, which takes a role as a hint in describing the cause of Rodrigo‟s
controversial remark „I will kill you (drug suspects)‟. Based on the data, Rodrigo reveals his
firmness by using spoken remark in facing the threat of drugs in Philippines. In addition,
Rodrigo‟s statement here may be related to the data utterance number 3 which describes
about the protest to Rodrigo in the way he threats the criminalists. But, the meaning here is
more specific than in the data utterance number 5. It is because Rodrigo has shown crystal
clear about the reason why he must warn the drug suspects. Furthermore, Rodrigo in this
sense may believe that the future of the origin children would be in danger if he, as the
president, did not take a serious action to protect them. Therefore, Rodrigo‟s statement here
may become an answer to describe why he wants to kill the drug suspects. And that may also
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be the way for Rodrigo to urge the readers or the hearers to think logically about the hard
decision Rodrigo made to protect and preserve the interest of the origin children.
In the excerpt number 6, the researcher finds that Rodrigo is using pronoun in
conveying his message. The using of pronoun is usually used to manipulate the language by
creating an imaginative communication. Based on Van Dijk‟s explanation cited on Eriyanto
(2001), pronoun constitutes a tool which is employed by communicator to denote the position
of an actor in a discourse. Rodrigo here uses pronoun „we‟ not only to draw a formal
communication with interviewers, but also to demonstrate his position that is in the line of
thinking with them. It is because the utilizing of pronoun „we‟ is literally using to express an
agreement on someone‟s opinion. Thus, by using pronoun in his statement, Rodrigo has
shown his sympathy to the innocent victims, and at the same time that also indirectly assist
him to form such a good representation in the readers‟ or hearers‟ minds.
In the data utterance number 7, the researcher finds that there are passivation and
transitive strategy in that Rodrigo‟s statements. The using of passivation here is to explain
about the victims died in the drug operation which has reached a deal number of death toll.
Rodrigo‟s statement “that is not my problem” may actually appear a bad judgment from the
readers or hearers because they may think that Rodrigo is not even concerned with the
increasing of death toll. However, Rodrigo has his own strategy in explain his aimed, in
which he provides the reason why he said so before. As we can see in the second statement
on the data utterance number 7, Rodrigo explains that there are some important things that he
should take care of rather than think about the death tolls that he considers as drug suspects.
Then, the function of transitive strategy here is to draw a clear explanation about Rodrigo‟s
statement that may be decided as contradictory statement in the hearers‟ or readers‟. Thus, the
existence of micro element in Rodrigo‟s statement is really help him in conveying his
personal goal, getting people‟ support to run his policy of war on drug.
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In the excerpt number 8, the researcher notices the existence of objectivity strategy in
Rodrigo‟s statement. Objectivity strategy can be seen on the words four million drug addicts.
In that statement, Rodrigo has firmly denoted the number of people that he must handle as
soon as possible. Additionally, by stating that deal number of drug addicts, Rodrigo has
indirectly invited the readers or hearers to think logically about what they would do if they
were in the position of Rodrigo. Providing the exact number of drug addicts may also assist
Rodrigo to change the readers‟ or hearers‟ way of thinking about him, so that he may get his
own chance to create his good representation by using the facts he collect.
In the data utterance number 9, we can see that Rodrigo uses pronoun in conveying
his message. The utilizing of pronoun „they‟ here demonstrates that Rodrigo attempts to show
his disagreement about what people said in the newspaper. Pronoun „they‟ in Van Dijk‟s
interpretation cited on Eriyanto (2001) is often used to create a distance between the speaker
and the publics. Thus, the researcher believes that Rodrigo intentionally employs pronoun
„they‟ in his statement in order to express his objection about the way people react to his
policy of drug war.
Based on the excerpt number 10, the researcher notices the using of passivation
strategy in Rodrigo‟s remark. Passive form itself here takes a role in focusing the readers‟ or
hearers‟ minds on the object of a speaking. It is because Rodrigo has reveals another fact
related to the budget for constructing a rehabilitation building for drug addicts, which was not
prepared by his predecessor. In addition, that fact may drag people down to question why the
predecessor did not make an arrangement for long-term that may help the latest president to
handle a crucial problem. The using of passive form may also become a good point to
Rodrigo in forming his own representation, for people at the same time may think that he is
such an autonomous president who tries hard to solve the drug problem in Philippines with
no fund to support his policy.
70
In the data utterance number 11, Rodrigo indirectly employs the strategy of transitive
to describe about the reason of his decision on launching drug war. As we can see, Rodrigo‟s
policy is intended to preserve or protect the next generation of Filipinos. That statement is
also related to Rodrigo‟s previous statement on the excerpt number 5, in which he also
explains explicitly the main reason of proposing war on drug. Based on Rodrigo‟s remark, the
researcher believes that Rodrigo may hope that people will support his decision, though it
brings a bad effect in the society. It is because drug problem has entered to be one of crucial
problems in Philippines that may bring a bad impact to the next generation of Filipinos if it
should not be handled properly.
In the excerpt number 12, the researcher finds that there is intransitive strategy in
Rodrigo‟s remark “I have been criticized”. She considers that excerpt as intransitive strategy
because there is no complete information about what aspect or factor that makes people
criticize Rodrigo. In addition, Rodrigo‟s unclear description also may appear gaps in the
readers‟ or hearers‟ mind, for they may emerge an imagination to find out the reason of
Rodrigo‟s incomplete remark. Due to the fact that that statement is delivered in a spoken
context, the researcher believes that Rodrigo may indirectly appear intransitive strategy in
order to avoid repetition on his answers. Thus, the researcher infers from this analysis that
intransitive strategy may take a different role in a context depends on the way it is presented.
In the data utterance number 13, passivation strategy can be seen on the words “…
certified by …” Rodrigo here uses passivation strategy to convey his message. As we can see,
his statement shows that Rodrigo cannot always consider something as the right one. It is
because he also has to rely on the policy that has been decided in order to elude an abuse.
Additionally, the existence of passive form here is to give an emphasizing that Food and
Drugs commission takes an important role in determining the suitable of medicinal
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properties, so that people may be careful in consuming medicine to save their lives from the
influence of drugs.
In the last data utterance, the researcher notices that Rodrigo provides a disclaimer on
his response to the interviewers. The existence of disclaimer itself is here to remind the
interviewers that though he is a president, he has no authority to consider something as a
good one as long as that is not included in his profession or he has no knowledge in that
domain. The using of disclaimer may also be used to avoid a misperception in people‟ minds
related to stipulations that have been approved before. Therefore, disclaimer strategy either in
written or in spoken context may be used to delimit someone‟s action so that they will keep
on obeying the rule as it should be.
3.2 Discussion
Based on those microstructures findings above, the researcher finds that most of the
journalist‟s strategies in presenting Duterte in the news coverage are aimed to create
Duterte‟s bad representation. It is because those strategies may reveal new other facts either
about Rodrigo, his policy, or his leadership which may also potentially affect the way the
readers think about the current issues of Rodrigo. For instance, the journalist often provides
the latest condition of the unlawful killings such as is in the article 1 line 22-23 about man
who was killed even after his surrender action or in the article 6 about South Korean
Businessman, Jee Ich-Joo, who was killed in illegal arrest and no valid evidence.
In those articles, the journalist has intentionally denoted the police power abuse that
cause a number of unlawful killings for the victims are died in brutal way. In addition, the
journalist also demonstrates another fact that the police do power abuse in the case of the
death of Jee Ich-Joo because of amount of money. By presenting that fact in the journalist‟s
news coverage, he or she may indirectly persuade the readers about the bad effects of drug
72
operation run by Rodrigo. Thus, they may believe that Rodrigo has taken a quite risky
decision to spread out peacefulness in Philippines because it has made some innocent people
should sacrifice their lives to incur satisfying result to Rodrigo.
The using of micro strategy in a discourse has its own meaning based on the writers.
In the BBC News coverage, the journalist tends to get rid of the main actor, Rodrigo, and
exploits the victims either about their condition or their facts to control the discourse. It can
be known through the journalist‟s reporting that mostly inclines to show the conditions of the
victims, the result of drug operation in a day or a week, or the critical response related to the
policy rather than denote good outcome of the drug war policy.
This research analysis is actually quite similar to Ningrum‟s analysis which
demonstrates that the Jakarta Post‟s journalist inclines to present his or her interest to the
victims rather than the main actor. She denotes that the using of micro strategy especially
inclusion strategies in The Jakarta Post crime news about women demonstrated another fact
of women as the victims, so that the journalist has got his or her strategy to advocate those
victims rather than marginalize or discriminate them. Thus, Rodrigo‟s bad representation in
this analysis is formed based on not only through the journalist‟s writing strategies, but also
the way the journalist connects one fact to other different facts that may change the way the
readers have a look at drug war policy.
Moreover, the aforementioned findings about Rodrigo‟s interview shows that
Rodrigo‟s explanation is crystal clear denoting that his decision of applying war on drug
policy is precise decision that he made. It is because he has calculated the cause of that
problem that will be appeared in the midst of Filipinos and the next generation of Filipinos,
so that he regards his drug war policy as an appropriate step to eradicate the drug access in
Philippines. In addition, the existence of micro strategies in Rodrigo‟s explanation also shows
that Rodrigo attempts to persuade the hearers about his opinion by providing the possible
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result of the threat of drug in Philippines. Then, his opinion may lead the hearers to rethink
critically and logically about Rodrigo‟s policy that was rejected by most of people. That is the
way Rodrigo builds his own representation which is no other media make, for instance BBC
News.
Furthermore, the researcher also discovers some journalist‟s strategies that are quite
different with what had been proposed by some scholars in their models of thinking as
follows: First, Leeuwen‟s passivation strategy inclines to hide the subject of an action, and
focus on the object so that the readers will be more concerned with and attracted to the object
than the subject, and then that tend to drag the readers down to the uncritical way of thinking
for the readers‟ minds have been under the control of the conditions of the object not to who
the subject/s is/are.
However, based on some of the journalist‟s selected restating statements, these
findings denote that the journalist is not always using passivation strategy to hide the subject,
and make the readers uncritically denying the subject in their minds for some of the following
data verify that by keeping on presenting the subject may assist the journalist not only to
convey his or her purposes on attracting the readers‟ interest, but also both to get rid of the
subject and form the subject‟s bad representation. Article 1 (line 21-22) “They were later
taken to a police station and allegedly killed there”, the journalist does not obviously present
the subject of the killings, yet he or she provides the location of killings, so that the readers
will automatically know who the subject that the journalist implicitly hide behind.
Article 1 (line 27-28) “Mr. dela Rosa told the inquiry on Tuesday that a total of 1,916
deaths had been recorded during the crackdown, 756 of which were during police operations”
denotes that the journalist may set the readers‟ interest and attention to the victims out and
that make them think uncritically, based on Leewun‟s perspective, but the journalist in this
sense attempts to prompt the readers‟ critical thinking by providing the number of game
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where the readers might think that the rest of unidentified victims may be considered as
unlawful killings for drugs operation is not only implemented by the police, but also
vigilante, mercenaries, contract killers, and citizens that may have no the exact lists of the
drug suspects (users and dealers).
Article 2 (line 21-22) “her husband was commissioned to kill a debtor by a policeman
- one who was also a drug pusher”, the journalist here explicitly uses passivation strategy not
to hide the subject, but to demonstrate explicitly the subject based on his or her status and
story behind so that the readers may be able to be less focusing on the object but may tend to
be more concerned with the subject. It is because the journalist has shown different shocking
fact in his or her restating statement which might make the readers to be conscious of the
police power abuse.
Article 2 (lines 55-57) “He has listed 150 senior officials, officers and judges linked
to the trade. Five police generals, he says, are kingpins of the business. But it is those at the
lowest levels of the trade who are targeted by the death squads”. That journalist‟s restating
statement is automatically encouraging the readers‟ critical thinking by questioning why only
the lowest levels of drug trade targeted and the kingpins are free from the death squads‟ target
of killings, how it could be, et cetera. Those critical statements may appear as long as the
journalist provides another fact in his or her strategy on using passive sentence.
Article 5 (line 34-35) “Nearly 6,000 people are said to have been killed by
police, vigilantes and mercenaries since Mr. Duterte launched his drug war after being
elected in May” shows that the journalist is still denoting the main subjects of the number of
killings, although he or she uses passivation strategy. The journalist may believe that that is
better to put the subject on show so that the readers will know how cruel they are. Therefore,
the journalist in this sense not only wants to attract the readers‟ sympathy, but also to
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influence their minds about those groups of people that have killed thousands people in less
than a half year.
Article 6 (line 4-5) “He had been kidnapped and killed by anti-drug police”
demonstrates that the journalist keeps providing the subject of killings when he or she applies
Leeuwen‟s passivation. Mentioning the subject here is explicitly done to put the anti-drug
police in the bad representations because they have committed with a crime of kidnapping
and killings the allegedly drug suspect. Thus, the journalist in this sense desires to get the
readers‟ sympathy to the victims and their bad judgment based on the police power abuse at
the same time.
Second, Chilton‟s political discourse analysis tends to focus on the reproduction of
political power, power abuse or domination through political discourse involving the various
forms of resistance or counter-power against such forms of discursive dominance. That might
be analyzed on the way we firstly examine the topic in some more detail (see pp. 13), so that
we may be able to see how macro and micro analysis is manifesting each other at the same
time to form either bad or good representation in Rodrigo‟s news coverage, then.
Nevertheless, there are some elements in van Dijk‟s political discourse structures
analysis cited on Chilton & Schaffner‟s missed from their analysis are predicative, exclusion
and inclusion, number of action, and disclaimer. It is because the researcher believes that not
only political topic, pronouns and metaphor which underlie reforming of mental
representation, but also those aforementioned elements might be able to be a base of
someone‟s mental representation. For instance, in the article 6 (line 20-26), we can see that
the journalist has shown his or her belief of Rodrigo in which he or she conveys it through
transitivity and passivation strategy so that it may also influence the readers‟ minds about
Rodrigo and his policy. Other example, in the article 3 (line 18-19), the journalist employs
disclaimer statement in which that must become an official statement used to limit the others‟
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movement so that they will be in the right track of the law or rule. Therefore, the using of
language can either explicitly or implicitly denote the journalist‟s way of thinking of an event
and then that is constructed in interesting statement in order to both affect the readers‟ minds
and get rid of the actor of an event.
The way the journalist is thinking cannot be separated from some commonly aspects
such as social, political or historical aspect. In BBC News coverage about Rodrigo‟s drug war
policy, the journalist inclines to represent Rodrigo in bad ways based on the facts that he or
she experiences or gets from the situations and conditions in the field. Furthermore, Rodrigo
is rarely represented in a positive representation in BBC News coverage. To remember that
Philippines and British had ever been in a bad situation that caused the two countries fighting
on the same side, so that bad historical aspect may also influence the way the BBC journalist
reports Rodrigo and his controversial policy.
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CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
This chapter presents conclusion and suggestion of this research. The conclusion is
drawn based on the formulation of the research questions in Chapter 1. The suggestion
provides some information for the next researchers who are interested in conducting the
research in the same field.
4.1 Conclusion
In this research, conclusions are drawn based on the findings and discussion. This
research produces the analysis of microstructures in political discourse in which there are
thirteen strategies found in BBC News article. Those are passivation, nominalization,
abstraction, categorization, determination, objectivity, association, transitive, intransitive,
disclaimer, number of game, metaphor and graphic. Based on those strategies, the researcher
reveals that most of the journalist‟s statements comprise negative meanings. It is because the
results in findings denote that the journalist intentionally employs those strategies to get rid of
Rodrigo by dealing with some information as follows: first, providing both former and latest
facts about either Rodrigo or power abuse in drug operation to persuade the readers‟ about
the truth that the journalist provides.
Second, providing the fact that Rodrigo‟s policy is totally contravening the law of
humanity can be also a starting point to the journalist to put Rodrigo in the bad representation
because Rodrigo himself has violated the value of democracy in which citizens are also
having their roles to achieve the values and aims they pursue. In other words, Rodrigo‟s war
on drugs may be proposed to preserve the next generations of Filipino, but that is unjust
aggression against other people so that that may outweigh the considerations of equality that
underpin democratic authority.
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Third, BBC News journalist often emerges comparison among west and east parties‟
response to Rodrigo‟s crackdown to dramatize Rodrigo‟s more bad representation. Any kind
of critics‟ refusal is presented to strengthen the journalist‟s opinion of the war. Those may
become a starting point to find out what Chilton called mental representation in the way
journalists represent an actor in a text. It is because the forming of someone‟s representation
should be supported by the journalist‟s knowledge about the current communicative situation
of his/her text or talk, so that she or he may be able to direct him or herself to construct
sentences based on the facts and then insert his or her own opinion or belief in among the
facts. That is the concrete description of the journalist‟s mental representation.
Therefore, Rodrigo will be totally kept on his bad representation as long as his policy
emerges more controversial and contradictory effects in the society, though, Rodrigo does his
defense through his interview with Aljazeera in which he explains all of the truth of every
action and decision he took in order to clean off people bad judgments to him. And most of
Rodrigo‟s statements in his interview also demonstrate that he launched war on drug for the
sake of Filipinos.
4.2 Suggestion
This present research has investigated how Rodrigo is represented in the media
coverage especially BBC News related to his policy of war on drug. Some strategies
discovered at micro level are quite assisting the journalist in forming such a bad
representation of Rodrigo, based on the findings and discussion. For people who want to
know more about contextual meaning in a text or talk of politicians, it is better and important
to study political discourse which provide both the analysis of micro and macro level so that
people will get tremendous knowledge about how journalists present an actor in a discourse,
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and the aimed of presenting an actor and an event in a unique way to either convey their
messages implicitly or explicitly.
The researcher believes that this research is not perfect as the readers‟ expected. There
may be some mistakes that should be corrected in further by next researcher who has the
same interest in this field. She also thinks that there are some strategies in this field that have
not been conducted such as assimilation, dissociation, individualization, etc. in the political
context such as parliamentary speech, live news political report. Therefore, she suggests that
the next researcher may analyze and describe more comprehensively about some issues used
micro level analysis.
Based on the findings of this research, the researcher suggests that the next
researchers can be able to discuss more details about microstructure analysis in the political
discourse in order to fulfill the gap found in this analysis. Besides, the next researchers also
can employ Van Dijk‟s theory of microstructure analysis and Chilton‟s political discourse
analysis in more specific analysis later on. After all, this suggestion hopefully contributes to
the better result in the next researchers on the similar topic.
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82
Appendix
No. Article(s) Excerpts Microstructures
Element
1. 1 1. “He has previously urged citizens to shoot and
kill drug dealers who resisted arrest, and
reiterated that the killings of drug suspects were
lawful if the police acted in self-defense.”
2. “…the killings of drug suspects were lawful if the
police acted in self-defense.”
3. “… his father was beaten up in front of them”.
“They were later taken to a police station and
allegedly killed there”.
4. “The two police officers accused claimed an
attempt had been made to grab one of their guns,
but this was refuted by the Philippines
Commission on Human Rights. It said they had
been badly injured and were shot three times. The
two officers have been charged with murder.”
5. “… a total of 1,916 deaths had been recorded
during the crackdown, 756 of which were during
police operations”.
6. “300 police officers were suspected to be
involved in the drugs trade…”
7. “Nearly 700,000 drug users and peddlers have
turned themselves in since the launch of the
Transitive
Nominalization
Passivation
Passivation
Number of game &
Passivation
Number of game &
Passivation
Number of game
83
campaign.”
8. “Human rights groups estimate than more than
1,000 people were killed with no legal process.”
Abstraction &
Passivation
2. 2 1. “She is part of a hit team that includes three
women, who are valued …”
2. ”… they can get close to their victims without
arousing the same suspicion a man would”
3. “President Duterte was elected …”
4. “… she and her husband had been told their safe
house had been exposed.”
5. “She described how it began when her husband
was commissioned to kill a debtor by a policeman
- one who was also a drug pusher.”
6. “Maria and her husband come from an
impoverished neighborhood of Manila and had
no regular income before agreeing to become
contract killers.”
7. “… rough-tongued president …”
8. “He has listed 150 senior officials, officers and
judges linked to the trade. Five police generals,
he says, are kingpins of the business.”
9. “Five police generals, he says, are kingpins of the
business. But it is those at the lowest levels of the
trade who are targeted by the death squads.”
10. According to the police more than 1,900
Intransitive
Transitive
Graphic
Intransitive
Passivation
Categorization
Graphic
Objectivity & Graphic
Passivation
Abstraction &
84
people have been killed.”
11. “Nearly all those whose bloodied bodies are
discovered every night in the slums of Manila and
other cities are the poor - pedicab drivers, casual
labourers, the unemployed.”
12. “… that innocent victims were being caught up in
it”
13. “I cannot surrender, because if I do the police
will probably kill me.”
14. “But her boss has threatened to kill anyone who
leaves the team”
Graphic
Determination,
Passivation &
Categorization
Association
Transitive
Transitive
3. 3 1. “Hundreds of alleged dealers have been killed in
the Philippines …”
2. “… Mr. Duterte allowed to police to shoot them
on sight”.
3. “Mr. Duterte, nicknamed "The Punisher", has
been condemned by the United Nations for his
approach against crime.”
4. "Our punishments have to be in accordance with
our law and with national and international
standards," said Slamet Pribadi.”
5. “About 2,400 people have been killed since Mr.
Duterte declared his war on drugs …”
Abstraction &
Passivation
Transitive
Passivation
Disclaimer
Passivation
4. 4 1. “Mr. Duterte's drugs war has caused thousands
of extrajudicial killings”
Abstraction
85
2. “... Mr. Duterte used insulting language …” Graphic
5. 5 1. “It is the first such admission he has made since
becoming president in June …”
2. “Mr. Duterte was speaking to business leaders
…”
3. “It is the latest in a series of controversial and
sometimes contradictory comments by Mr.
Duterte.”
4. “Blood on his hands’”
5. “… a wave of unlawful killings claiming more
than 5,000 lives across the country …"
6. “Nearly 6,000 people are said to have been killed
by police, vigilantes and mercenaries…”
7. “He has expressed few regrets about the policy,
once saying : “Hitler massacred three millions
Jews …”
8. “Mr. Duterte has repeatedly said he does not
care about human rights and has suggested that
lawyers defending drug suspects might also be
targeted in his campaign, says the BBC's
Jonathan Head”
Graphic
Graphic
Graphic
Graphic
Abstraction
Abstraction,
Passivation & Graphic
Graphic
Passivation
6. 6 1. “… anti-drug units would be dissolved”.
2. “He had been kidnapped and killed by anti-drug
police”
3. “He has repeatedly promised to support, even
Intransitive
Passivation
Transitive &
86
pardon, any police officers accused of unlawful
killing, and been unmoved even by the clear
evidence of police involvement in the drug trade,
and the murder of important drug suspects in
police custody.”
4. “But the shocking murder of South Korean
businessman Jee Ick-Joo last October…”
5. “He has ordered all tainted officers to be sent to
front-line duty in the conflict-wracked southern
Philippines.”
6. “More than 4,000 of the deaths are blamed on
unidentified hit squads, although many of those
are believed to be run by the police”
7. “But the shocking murder of South Korean
businessman Jee Ick-joo last October has forced
Mr. Duterte to acknowledge that the Philippines
National Police are too tainted to continue
running the anti-drugs campaign”
8. “More than 4,000 of the deaths are blamed on
unidentified hit squads …”
9. “Jee Ick-joo was seized from his home in Angeles
city, near Manila, under the pretense of a drug
raid, the Department of Justice said”.
Passivation
Graphic
Passivation
Passivation
Transitive
Abstraction &
Number of game
Passivation
7. 7 1. “The rights group also said in a report that the
killings may constitute “crimes against
Graphic
87
humanity”.”
2. “… police were only authorized to open fire when
threatened by suspects.”
3. “The rights group said there appeared to be
financial incentives for the killings, with one
officer claiming they were given an "under the
table" payment for each death, as well as
payments from some funeral homes”
Passivation
Metaphor
Philippines war on drugs: '1,900 killed' amid crackdown
23 August 2016
The head of the Philippines police has said more than 1,900 people have been killed
during a crackdown on illegal drugs in the past seven weeks.
Ronald dela Rosa was speaking at a senate hearing into the sharp rise in deaths since Rodrigo
Duterte became president.
He said police operations had killed about 750 people, but the other deaths were still being
investigated.
Mr. Duterte won the presidency with his hard-line policy to eradicate drugs.
He has previously urged citizens to shoot and kill drug dealers who resisted arrest, and
reiterated that the killings of drug suspects were lawful if the police acted in self-defence.
He also threatened to "separate" from the UN after it called his war on drugs a crime under
international law.
The US has said it is "deeply concerned" by the increase in drug-related killings.
88
The senate joint inquiry is being conducted by Senator Leila de Lima, who has called on
authorities to explain the "unprecedented" rise in deaths.
It is also hearing from the relatives of some of those killed
Faces of the crackdown
The family members of some of those killed are getting the chance to tell their stories to the
inquiry.
Wearing dark glasses and draped in a shawl, Harra Besorio said policemen raided her home
in Pasay City without a warrant and stripped her infant daughter to check for drugs.
Her partner, who she admitted was a small-time dealer, and his father was beaten up in front
of them, she told the inquiry on Monday. They were later taken to a police station and
allegedly killed there.
The two police officers accused claimed an attempt had been made to grab one of their guns,
but this was refuted by the Philippines Commission on Human Rights.
It said they had been badly injured and were shot three times. The two officers have been
charged with murder.
Mr. dela Rosa told the inquiry on Tuesday that a total of 1,916 deaths had been recorded
during the crackdown, 756 of which were during police operations.
He said the number had gone up even since he gave evidence on Monday, where he gave a
figure of 1,800 deaths.
"Not all deaths under investigations are drug-related," he told news agency Reuters, saying
about 40 killings were due to robbery or personal disputes.
However, Mr. dela Rosa said there was no declared policy to kill drug users and pushers,
saying police were "not butchers".
The police director-general also added that about 300 police officers were suspected to be
involved in the drugs trade, warning that they would be charged and removed from their
positions if found guilty.
89
Nearly 700,000 drug users and peddlers have turned themselves in since the launch of the
campaign, Mr. dela Rosa said.
He also said that there was a decrease in overall crime, though the number of homicides and
murders had increased.
On Monday, Mr. dela Rosa told the inquiry: "I admit many are dying but our campaign, now,
we have the momentum."
Senator Frank Drilon told Reuters that the number of deaths was "alarming" and had "a
chilling effect".
In his previous role as mayor of Davao, Mr. Duterte built a reputation for blunt speaking and
supporting the extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals.
Crime rates in Davao decreased while he was in office, though human rights groups estimate
than more than 1,000 people were killed with no legal process.
90
Philippines drugs war: The woman who kills dealers for a living
26 August 2016
The Philippines is in the midst of a brutal war on drugs sanctioned by the controversial
President Rodrigo Duterte, which has seen almost 2,000 killings in a matter of weeks.
The BBC's Jonathan Head explores the country's dark underbelly of dealers and
assassins through the story of one woman trapped in a chilling predicament.
When you meet an assassin who has killed six people, you don't expect to encounter a
diminutive, nervous young woman carrying a baby.
"My first job was two years ago in this province nearby. I felt really scared and nervous
because it was my first time."
Maria, not her real name, now carries out contract killings as part of the government-
sanctioned war on drugs.
She is part of a hit team that includes three women, who are valued because they can get
close to their victims without arousing the same suspicion a man would.
Since President Duterte was elected, and urged citizens and police to kill drug dealers who
resisted arrest, Maria has killed five more people, shooting them all in the head.
I asked her who gave the orders for these assassinations: "Our boss, the police officer," she
said.
On the very afternoon we met, she and her husband had been told their safe house had been
exposed. They were moving in a hurry.
This controversial drug war has brought her more work, but more risk too. She described
how it began when her husband was commissioned to kill a debtor by a policeman - one
who was also a drug pusher.
"My husband was ordered to kill people who had not paid what they owed."
91
This turned into a regular commission for her husband until a more challenging situation
cropped up.
"One time, they needed a woman... my husband tapped me to do the job. When I saw the
man I was supposed to kill, I got near him and I shot him. "
Maria and her husband come from an impoverished neighborhood of Manila and had no
regular income before agreeing to become contract killers. They earn up to 20,000
Philippines pesos ($430; £327) per hit, which is shared between three or four of them. That
is a fortune for low-income Filipinos, but now it looks as if Maria has no way out.
Contract killing is nothing new in the Philippines. But the hit squads have never been as
busy as they are now. President Duterte has sent out an unambiguous message.
Ahead of his election, he promised to kill 100,000 criminals in his first six months in office.
And he has warned drug dealers in particular: "Do not destroy my country, because I will
kill you."
Last weekend he reiterated that blunt view, as he defended the extrajudicial killings of
suspected criminals.
"Do the lives of 10 of these criminals really matter? If I am the one facing all this grief,
would 100 lives of these idiots mean anything to me?"
The BBC witnesses a drugs raid in one of Manila's biggest prisons
What has provoked the rough-tongued president to unleash this merciless campaign is the
proliferation of the drug crystal meth or "shabu" as it is known in the Philippines. Cheap,
easily made, and intensely addictive, it offers an instant high, an escape from the filth and
drudgery of life in the slums, a hit to get laborers in grueling jobs like truck-driving through
their day.
1.1 What is Shabu?
Often called "ice" or "crystal meth" in the West, Shabu is the term used for a pure and
potent form of amphetamine in the Philippines and other parts of Asia.
Shabu costs about 1,000 Philippines peso per gram ($22; £16)
92
It can be smoked, injected, snorted or dissolved in water
The Philippines is home to industrial-scale labs producing tonnes of the drug - which
is then distributed throughout Asia.
Mr. Duterte describes it as a pandemic, afflicting millions of his fellow citizens. It is also very
profitable. He has listed 150 senior officials, officers and judges linked to the trade. Five
police generals, he says, are kingpins of the business. But it is those at the lowest levels of the
trade who are targeted by the death squads.
According to the police more than 1,900 people have been killed in drug-related incidents
since he took office on 30 June. Of those, they say, 756 were killed by the police, all, they
say, while resisting arrest. The remaining deaths are, officially, under investigation.
In practice most will remain unexplained. Nearly all those whose bloodied bodies are
discovered every night in the slums of Manila and other cities are the poor - Pedi cab drivers,
casual laborers, the unemployed. Often, found next to them are cardboard signs warning
others not to get involved in drugs. This is a war being fought almost exclusively in the
poorest parts of the country. People like Maria are used as its agents.
But it is a popular war. In Tondo, the shantytown area next to Manila port, most of the
residents applaud the president's tough campaign. They blamed the "shabu" scourge for rising
crime, and for destroying lives, although some worried that the campaign was getting out of
hand, and that innocent victims were being caught up in it.
One of those being hunted by the death squads is Roger - again not his real name.
He became addicted to shabu as a young man, he says, while working as a casual labourer.
Like many addicts he began dealing to support his habit, as it was a more comfortable job
than labouring. He worked a lot with corrupt police officers, sometimes taking portions of the
drug hauls they confiscated in raids to sell.
Now he is on the run, moving from place to place every few days to avoid being tracked
down and killed.
"Every day, every hour, I cannot get the fear out of my chest. It's really tiring and scary to
hide all the time. You don't know if the person right in front of you will inform on you, or if
the one facing you might be a killer. It's hard to sleep at night. One small noise, I wake up.
And the hardest part of all is I don't know who to trust, I don't know which direction to go
every day, looking for a place to hide."
93
He does feel guilt about his role in the trade of this destructive drug.
"I do truly believe that I have committed sins. Big time. I have done many awful things. I've
wronged a lot people because they've become addicted, because I'm one of the many who
sells them drugs. But what I can say is that not everyone who uses drugs is capable of
committing those crimes, of stealing, and eventually killing. I'm also an addict but I don't kill.
I'm an addict but I don't steal."
He has sent his children to live with his wife's family in the countryside, to try to stop them
being exposed to the drug epidemic. He estimates that between 30% and 35% of people in his
neighborhood are addicts.
So when President Duterte stated several times during his presidential campaign that he would
kill drug dealers, throw their bodies into Manila Bay, did Roger not take that threat seriously?
"Yes, but I thought he would go after the big syndicates who manufacture the drugs, not the
small time dealers like me. I wish I could turn the clock back. But it is too late for me. I
cannot surrender, because if I do the police will probably kill me."
Maria also regrets the choice she has made.
"I feel guilty and it is hard on my nerves. I don't want the families of those I have killed to
come after me."
She worries about what her children will think. "I do not want them to come back at us and
say that they got to live because we killed for money." Already her older boy asks questions
about how she and her husband earn so much.
She has one more hit, one more contract to fulfill, and would like that to be her last. But her
boss has threatened to kill anyone who leaves the team. She feels trapped. She asks her priest
for forgiveness at confession in church, but does not dare to tell him what she does.
Does she feel any justification carrying out President Duterte's campaign to terrorize the drug
trade into submission?
94
"We only talk about the mission, how to carry it out," she says. "When it is finished we never
talk about it again."
But she wrings her hands as she speaks and keeps her eyes shut tight, pursued by thoughts she
does not want to share.
95
Indonesia drug chief calls for Philippine-style crackdown
7 September 2016
Indonesia's anti-narcotics chief has called for the country to imitate the brutal war on
drugs launched by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Budi Waseso praised Mr. Duterte and said drug dealers' lives were "meaningless".
Hundreds of alleged dealers have been killed in the Philippines since Mr. Duterte allowed to
police to shoot them on sight.
Mr. Duterte, nicknamed "The Punisher", has been condemned by the United Nations for his
approach against crime.
President Joko Widodo is hosting Mr. Duterte in Jakarta later this week, where discussions on
how to tackle the drugs trade will be high on the agenda.
Indonesia already has some of the toughest drug laws in the world and ended a four-year
moratorium on executions in 2013.
Speaking at a press conference held by Indonesia‟s anti-narcotics agency (BNN), Mr. Waseso
said the country would bolster its arsenal of weapons, officers, and technology devoted to
combating the drugs trade.
"The life of a dealer is meaningless because [he] carries out mass murder," he said.
When asked if Indonesia would be as aggressive as the Philippines, Mr. Waseso said: "Yes I
believe so."
A spokesman for the BNN later struck a different tone, saying Indonesia would not be as
aggressive.
"Our punishments have to be in accordance with our law and with national and international
standards," said Slamet Pribadi.
The BBC looks at the prison which has been called 'the Alcatraz of Indonesia', where
condemned prisoners are executed by firing squad
About 2,400 people have been killed since Mr. Duterte declared his war on drugs, Reuters
news agency reports - 900 in official police operations and the rest in "deaths under
investigation", a term human rights activists say is a euphemism for vigilante and
extrajudicial killings.
96
When US President Barack Obama said earlier this week he would raise the issue with Mr.
Duterte, his Philippine counterpart responded by threatening to call him a "son of a whore".
Mr. Obama subsequently cancelled a scheduled meeting between the two, and Mr. Duterte
expressed regret for his comment.
Indonesia executed four people, including foreign nationals, in July on charges of drug
smuggling, despite condemnation from the UN.
In April last year President Joko Widodo drew the ire of the Australian government with a
previous execution of 14, including two Australians.
Mr. Waseso drew criticism and mockery in November when he proposed building a prison
guarded by crocodiles.
"You can't bribe crocodiles. You can't convince them to let inmates escape," he said at the
time.
97
Philippines' Duterte tells Obama to 'go to hell'
4 October 2016
US President Barack Obama can "go to hell" over his criticism of the Philippines'
brutal war against drugs, President Rodrigo Duterte says.
The European Union - another critic - "better choose purgatory, hell is filled up", Mr. Duterte
said.
The remarks came as the US and the Philippines began joint military exercises. The US said
there was a "strong alliance" with the Philippines.
Mr. Duterte's drugs war has caused thousands of extrajudicial killings.
In a speech to local officials and business executives Mr. Duterte said he was disappointed
with the US for criticizing the Philippines' tactics to combat the drug trade. He also described
Washington as an unreliable ally.
"Instead of helping us, the first to criticize is this state department, so you can go to hell, Mr.
Obama, you can go to hell."
Later on Tuesday he warned: "Eventually I might, in my time, I will break up with America. I
would rather go to Russia and to China.''
Mr. Duterte also revealed that the US had refused to sell weapons to Manila, but added that
he would be able to buy them elsewhere.
"If you don't want to sell arms, I'll go to Russia. I sent the generals to Russia and Russia said,
'Do not worry, we have everything you need, we'll give it to you'.
"And as for China, they said, 'Just come over and sign and everything will be delivered',"
President Duterte said.
In response to his comments, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said: "This is an alliance
that is robust and that benefits both of our countries. The diplomatic lines of communication
between the United States and the Philippines remain open.
"Even as we protect this strong alliance, the administration and the United States of America
will not hesitate to raise our concerns about extra-judicial killings.
98
"We have not yet received any sort of formal communication using those channels from the
Filipino government about making substantial changes to our bilateral relationship."
The Philippines, once a colony of the US, has a longstanding defense relationship with
Washington.
But Mr. Duterte said last week these would be the last joint military exercises while he is in
office, although later his defense secretary said there was no official order yet to that effect.
He also said he would review a defense pact signed two years ago with the US that would see
more US troops sent to the Philippines.
The pact is seen as vital for the US to counter China's activities in the South China Sea.
The eight-day military drills involve 1,100 American troops and 400 Filipino military
personnel, and are taking place on northern Luzon Island.
They are aimed at improving readiness to respond to crises and deepening historic ties, the
US military said.
Relations were strained last month when the US cancelled a bilateral meeting after Mr.
Duterte used insulting language to refer to the US president.
99
Philippines' Duterte admits personally killing suspects
14 December 2016
Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte has admitted he personally killed criminal
suspects as mayor of Davao.
It is the first such admission he has made since becoming president in June, but echoes
comments he made in 2015.
He ran the southern city for two decades, earning a reputation for cutting crime, and criticism
for allegedly supporting death squads.
Mr. Duterte was speaking to business leaders at the presidential palace on Monday, before
an overseas trip.
It is the latest in a series of controversial and sometimes contradictory comments by Mr.
Duterte.
'Blood on his hands'
"In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys [police] that if I can do it why
can't you," he said.
"And I'd go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just
patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could
kill."
In 2015, he admitted killing at least three men suspected of kidnapping and rape in Davao.
The comments have been condemned by human rights group Amnesty International, which
has called on him to put an immediate end to the killings.
"The climate of impunity in the Philippines has intensified even further since President
Duterte began his brutal crackdown on suspected drug users and dealers in July, with a wave
of unlawful killings claiming more than 5,000 lives across the country," said Rafendi Djamin,
the group's director for South East Asia and the Pacific.
"By boasting about the blood on his own hands, President Duterte will further embolden
police and vigilantes to blatantly violate laws and carry out more extrajudicial executions
without fear of being held to account."
But just hours before Mr. Duterte's latest remarks, he insisted "I am not a killer", in a speech
for The Outstanding Filipino Awards 2016. He has also previously both acknowledged and
denied being involved with death squads.
100
In September a Senate inquiry heard testimony from a self-confessed former death squad
member that Mr. Duterte had, while serving as Davao mayor, shot dead a justice department
agent with an Uzi submachine gun.
Nearly 6,000 people are said to have been killed by police, vigilantes and mercenaries since
Mr. Duterte launched his drug war after being elected in May. He has expressed few regrets
about the policy, once saying: "Hitler massacred three million Jews... There are three million
drug addicts. I'd be happy to slaughter them."
Mr. Duterte has repeatedly said he does not care about human rights and has suggested that
lawyers defending drug suspects might also be targeted in his campaign, says the BBC's
Jonathan Head.
Some human rights lawyers believe the outspoken president's open support for a shoot-to-kill
policy by the police could make him vulnerable to prosecution for crimes against humanity at
the international court.
101
Philippines to suspend drug war to clean up 'corrupt' police
30 January 2017
Philippine police are suspending their controversial war on drugs until after the
"corrupt" police force has been "cleansed".
Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa said on Monday that anti-drug units would be dissolved.
It comes after the murder of a South Korean businessman inside police headquarters. He had
been kidnapped and killed by anti-drug police.
More than 7,000 people have been killed since the crackdown on drugs began.
The death toll and President Rodrigo Duterte's hardline stance against drugs have attracted
intense criticism from human rights groups and Western countries, although the president
continues to enjoy a high level of support among Filipinos.
Speaking on Monday, Mr. Dela Rosa said Mr. Duterte "told us to clean the organization
first".
"We will cleanse our ranks... then maybe after that, we can resume our war on drugs."
Raffy Lerma is a photo-journalist documenting the nightly killings
Mr. Duterte has made tackling drug use in the Philippines a central part of his presidency.
He had initially promised to eradicate the problem by December, then extended the deadline
to March this year.
But he told reporters at a press conference late on Sunday: "I will extend it to the last day of
my term... March no longer applies." Mr. Duterte's term ends in 2022.
He said he had underestimated the depth of the drug problem.
Jonathan Head, South East Asia correspondent, BBC News: Police too tainted
For eight months President Duterte has been unrepentant as the death toll from his drug war
has risen. He has repeatedly promised to support, even pardon, any police officers accused of
unlawful killing, and been unmoved even by the clear evidence of police involvement in the
drug trade, and the murder of important drug suspects in police custody.
102
But the shocking murder of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo last October has forced
Mr. Duterte to acknowledge that the Philippines National Police are too tainted to continue
running the anti-drugs campaign.
Mr. Duterte now accuses the police force of being "corrupt to the core". He has ordered all
tainted officers to be sent to front-line duty in the conflict-wracked southern Philippines.
Even if this happens, though, it will not necessarily bring the drug killings to an end. More
than 4,000 of the deaths are blamed on unidentified hit squads, although many of those are
believed to be run by the police. And the president's promise to extend the anti-drug
campaign to the end of his term of office suggests he may try to revive it once the fuss about
the murdered South Korean dies down.
Senator Leila De Lima, Mr. Duterte's most vocal critic, said the president and the police chief
"should categorically give the order to end the killings".
She said the dismantling of the police anti-narcotics operation meant "they are aware that the
very men involved in anti-drug operations... are involved in illegal activities under the guise
of the so-called war on drugs," she told ANC television.
'Corrupt to the core'
Mr. Duterte also railed against the police force on Sunday and vowed to "cleanse" it, in
response to the killing of Jee Ick-joo.
Mr. Duterte railed against the "corrupt" police force during his press conference late on
Sunday night
Jee Ick-joo was seized from his home in Angeles city, near Manila, under the pretense of a
drug raid, the Department of Justice said. After strangling him, his killers pretended he was
still alive in order to collect a ransom from his family.
"You policemen are the most corrupt. You are corrupt to the core. It's in your system," Mr.
Duterte said, adding that he thought up to 40% of policemen were used to corruption.
Mr. Duterte had sanctioned extra-judicial killings previously, saying he would pardon
policemen who kill criminals and civilians in the line of duty.
"When I said I'll protect the police, I'll protect the police. But I won't protect lying," he said.
103
Amnesty: Philippine police 'planned' drug war killings
1 February 2017
Amnesty International has accused the Philippine police of "systematically planning"
extrajudicial killings in the controversial war against drugs.
The rights group also said in a report that the killings may constitute "crimes against
humanity".
More than 7,000 have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte launched his "war" on the
drug trade in July.
He has always defended the crackdown, saying police were only authorized to open fire when
threatened by suspects.
But on Monday, the president suspended it and ordered a "clean-up" of the police force
following the murder of a South Korean businessman by a group of rogue anti-drug police
officers.
There has been no government reaction to the Amnesty report, but the Philippine police have
also consistently said those killed were resisting arrest.
Amnesty disputed this based on witness testimony and independent investigations, saying it
was "deeply concerned that the deliberate and widespread killings of alleged drug
offenders....appear to be systematic, planned and organized by the authorities".
"Police officers routinely bust down doors in the middle of the night and then kill in cold
blood unarmed people suspected of using or selling drugs.
"In several cases documented by Amnesty International, witnesses described alleged drug
offenders yelling they would surrender, at times while on their knees or in another compliant
position. They were still gunned down."
Amnesty also said officers planted evidence and falsified reports to "cover their tracks".
The rights group said there appeared to be financial incentives for the killings, with one
officer claiming they were given an "under the table" payment for each death, as well as
payments from some funeral homes.
Raffy Lerma is a photo-journalist documenting the nightly killings
104
The rights group said the vast majority of those killed were poor and on "drug watch lists"
prepared by government officials and shared with police.
It said the lists were "deeply problematic" and that names could be put on it "based on
hearsay and community rumor or rivalry, with little to no verification".
The group spoke to 110 people for the report including witnesses of killings, victims'
relatives, drug users, police officers, and members of government, civil society and religious
groups.
Mr. Duterte has come under heavy criticism from rights groups and Western countries for his
hardline stance on drugs.
But the shocking and high-profile kidnap and murder of the South Korean businessman
prompted Mr. Duterte to admit that the police is "corrupt to the core" and he suspended the
drug war with all anti-drug units dissolved and ordered a re-organization of their ranks.
He has in the past sanctioned extra-judicial killings by the police, saying he would pardon
them for such acts, and once said he would be "happy to slaughter" three million drug
addicts.
105
No. Data Utterances Microstructures
Elements
1. “I want say I grew up in environmental politics. And as
politicians, we tend to go by the issues already the big ones that
affect the conditions economic and all especially the political
issues.”
Transitive
2. “Because the sheer number of people contaminated will put in
my country now.”
Transitive
3. “When you threat a criminalist with death in my country at
least there is no law which says I cannot threat that
criminalist.”
Disclaimer
4. “I said if we do not interdict this problem, then the next
generation will be having a serious problem”
Transitive
5. “If you destroy origin children, I will kill you, that is very
correct statement”
Transitive
6. “It could not be neglected, just because we have to save their
life”
Pronoun
7. “there are killed by the thousands, that is not my problem” Passivation
8. “My problem is how to take care of the law-abiding, God-
fearing, young persons of this republic because they are
resources”
Transitive
9. “I have four million drug addicts …” Objectivity
10. “This is rehab feasibility built by somebody. This is what they
degraded”
Pronoun
11. “There is nothing at all left in the budget for this year which Passivation
106
was prepared by my predecessor, which was also prepared the
other year to be implemented this year”
12. “Because we can live or lives normally and of course business
can thrive”
Pronoun
13. “when I said I don’t care about what the human rights guys say,
I have a duty to preserve the generation. If it involves human
rights I don’t give a shit. I have to strike fear because I have, I
said the enemies of the states are out there to destroy the
children”
Transitive
14. “There can be no ramification when I said that I will kill you if
you destroy my land. It is just a legitimate statement”
Disclaimer
15. “I have four millions addicts to take care of and I have been
criticized”
Transitive &
Intransitive
16. “But they allow so many administrations said to flourish and it
was not until I became a president”
Pronoun
17. “It has to be something like being officially certified by the
Food and Drugs of the Philippines”
Passivation
18. “I, I, I am not the authority for that. It is food and drug
administration which is that its work.”
Disclaimer
October 15, 2016
TALK TO ALJAZEERA: DEATH, DRUGS, AND DIPLOMACY
We‟re in the presidential Duke Palace in Manila, where it‟s just over 100 days into the
presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. In an exclusive first interview since he was sworn in, we talk
to him about his controversial war on drugs and foreign policy including deteriorating
relations with the United States and potentially warming relations with China. The president
of the Republic of the Philippines Rodrigo Roa Duterte talks to Aljazeera.
107
Jamela Alindogan: Mr. President, Thank you for talking to Aljazeera. It‟s been a tumultuous
started the presidency for you full of controversy particularly about the war on drugs; yet first
let‟s start with your background. You were raised in a politically inclined family. Your father
was a governor, and your mother was a freedom fighter during the reign of former president
Ferdinand Marcus. How was that affected your outlook?
Rodrigo: but profoundly, I want say I grew up in environmental politics. And as politicians,
we tend to go by the issues already the big ones that affect the conditions economic and all
especially the political issues. And my father was governor for ten years but when he died I
was then a prosecutor. And the revolution came, my mother was one of the Star Wars of the
opposition against multiple you
Wayney Hay: you‟ll have said that your difficult times, when you‟re younger as a child you
have revealed that you are sexually abused by priest it. Has that shaped your belief? Has that
shaped, helped to shape who you are now?
Rodrigo: yes, the large extend actually is what you get along the way that shapes your
character, especially. And even your hmm your, your, your, at the time even your politics and
hmm how you look at world and how you assess them by the standard of your views in
school. And in growing up, the face that you pick up along the way he said sorts of a blend
into a collation, it blends into something which is hmm we can be said forming your own
values in life.
Wayney Hay: let‟s talk about the war on drugs now. Three and a half thousand people have
been killed as far as it seems like whole world is talking about it. At the moment, the
Philippines seem to have so many problems, so why launch what is a brutal war on drugs?
Rodrigo: because the sheer number of people contaminated will put in my country now. It
would destroy the next generation of Filipino. You know, this lives lost, some of them were
lost during legitimate encounters with the police.
Wayney Hay: but the fact is at the moment, we have three and a half thousand people killed,
and you yourself eluded to just then that perhaps some of them weren‟t legitimate targets.
Rodrigo: you know, there is no crime at all. When you threat a criminalist with death in my
country at least there is no law which says I cannot threat that criminalist. And that was the
favored hmm one the cliché that the used, it become a cliché over time. And when I was a
president I said we have three million according to padilla, three millions drug addicts, not
counting mine because it is still going on. So, I said if we do not interdict this problem, then
the next generation will be having a serious problem. And I found that again same you
destroy my country I‟ll kill you, and it‟s a legitimate thing. If you destroy origin children, I
will kill you, that is very correct statement. There is nothing wrong in trying to preserve the
interest of the next generation. That three mill ions addicts, it is not, they are not a resident of
one compact area or contiguous place, they spread all over the country and by the sheer
number. Because if you are a user, you must push, unless you are the son of hmm a
billionaire. Because you have to sustain your addiction by getting another fine answer for
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you. And the next fine answer, you have to get in your victim to financial. That‟s all it
became. That is our drugs spread but it was not until I became a president. That the
widespread, the magnitude of the problem became really a serious issue.
Wayney Hay: so, what about the children and the innocent people who have been killed?
Rodrigo: well, that is bad.
Wayney Hay: so, will those cases being investigated? Do you give, do you promise that?
Rodrigo: yes, of course, of course but let me tell you. This is the law of my land. Here it is
police (right index finger), here it is gangster (left index finger). He is embodying‟ that I‟m
sixteen (right index finger), the gangster has only a pistol but when they meet, they
exchanged fire. When the police (right index finger) I‟m sixteen, it is one push (breet)
(making sound of gunshot) and hits one thousand people there until died. There is no criminal
rehabilitee. It could not be neglected, just because we have to save their life. It could not be
restlessness because we have to defend yourself. Just like when the United States and the rest
of the country, when you bomb the village, you intent to kill the militants but you kill in the
process, the children there. It is only how it is explained. And we are, em you know, people
judge based on they condemn. So, do we always place you in the bad line, but the situation
there doesn‟t conform that. And that explain the reason why until now, I have yet to hear and
apologize for those of in Vietnam in Afghanistan never minds about the militants, kill them,
we don‟t, but then in the pressure to families, hospital or its collateral damage. Then why is
it? It is a collateral damage in the west and to us it is murder.
Jamela Alindogan: You went to law school, you worked hard to be part of the legal system,
you are a lawyer by profession, and you were persecutor for many years. Do you still believe
in the country‟s judicial system?
Rodrigo: let know, I should believe in the system because I will guarantee this time that the
law is big there are judges here in manila more than one thousand cases, no conviction at all
of a drug case. That is where band is close a a a maybe savagery threatening people on both
sides. That is how it is plated. That‟s why this miserable about a thing about the drug
problem.
Wayney Hay: but do you agree, do you acknowledge that you have encouraged vigilante
killings?
Rodrigo: no, I said I will kill you, if I encourage, fine.
Wayney Hay: yes but the point is that people can‟t get away with murder right now. And you
know that somebody killings are not legitimated.
Rodrigo: well
Wayney Hay: so, do you think that there might be cases of people settling our scores out
there and disguising them as the war of drugs?
109
Rodrigo: I don‟t play with conjecture, I don‟t make assumption, I just say what I should be
saying as a president and as a mayor. Now if if if the criminals, they are killed by the
thousands, that is not my problem. My problem is how to take care of the law-abiding, God-
fearing, young persons of this republic because they are resources. The strictly speaking, you
do cannot find any redeeming factor in being, a, you know, the criminals there. They are
there for what? They are there for just like the cartel in Mexico. If we have read the iona
grillo there is how they cookie crumbles exactly I will kill you because I am the mayor, I am
the president. Now if vigilant want take over but you know I can‟t control it, I can‟t be god
and control everything. Ok you just kill these guys or you wait for the courts do that.
Wayney Hay: well you can encourage good policing and you can encourage justice
Rodrigo: yes
Wayney Hay: and trust in the judicial system?
Rodrigo: correct. But when I was complaining as a president, the drug problem was already
reaching by the millions. Three million is three million. Now during my time, we have started
to pound we are nearing at the eight hundred mark, eight hundred thousand by the year end,
and I would have about also a million. So, I have four million drug addicts, do you think
that‟s an easy number?
Wayney Hay: no, so why not put all the energy into rehabilitation?
Rodrigo: what do you find that?
Wayney Hay: reforming health care?
Rodrigo: ok, um I can‟t, let me cut this for a while?
Rodrigo asking for a newspaper
Jamela Alindogan: (he wants to show you the newspaper)
Wayne Hay: (oh sure, sure no problem)
Jamela Alindogan: so you were saying about this facility sir what is this about?
Rodrigo: this is rehab feasibility built by somebody. This is what they degraded. You know
Duterte he should built a, ha, re rehab houses instead of killing the criminals, the drug lords,
you know they should cost millions. I entered the presidency of the Republic of the
Philippines midterm. There is nothing at all left in the budget for this year which was
prepared by my predecessor, which was also prepared the other year to be implemented this
year. The implementation does not contain any money because nobody until I became
president of this country, nobody realized how wide spread, how dimensional it was.
Jamela Alindogan: sir, in the past during the campaign and weeks into your presidency, you
have repeatedly said that you have no regard for human rights, mm but human rights is
110
actually a part of the constitution and as a head of state, it is also part, your duty to uphold the
constitution, how does that connect?
Rodrigo: I would rather intimidate and strike fear in the hearts of criminals just like what
happened in Davao when finally you can walk the streets mm walk about in the streets at
night and you can eat anywhere or anytime and mm nobody, nobody would bother you. It‟s
happening in Davao. Davao city is in the midst of Mindanao, metro badlan, but I can‟t assure
you the people have been there. It‟s a destination for conventions and conferences
international. It‟s always selected so it‟s booming. It is a little bit rich than the others, why?
Because we can live or lives normally and of course business can thrive. So, that, that, that
when I said I don‟t care about what the human rights guys say, I have a duty to preserve the
generation. If it involves human rights I don‟t give a shit. I have to strike fear because I have,
I said the enemies of the states are out there to destroy the children.
Jamela Alindogan: are you not worried about possible ramifications in the future for you, a
possible impeachment or being tried in the international court?
Rodrigo: good question. Before you can begin, you must determine that I have committed the
crime in my country, that I have committed mass murders in my country and then charged
with them. There can be no ramification when I said that I will kill you if you destroy my
land. It is just a legitimate statement; it is just a legitimate statement of any general, of any
work time president, of any tribal leader to say those things, of course you said there can be
consequences but I am not worried about this, I don‟t make any projections, how many
vigilante killings while you have compared the four million to the three thousand or might
know that legitimate in counters between the law enforcers and the criminals, give or take
even a half of it so what is it to the lives already lost. I have four millions addicts to take care
of and I have been criticized, I would say why don‟t just you know Duterte built the rehab
centers and just placed them there. Why do we have to kill them? Look. I am in midterm
president. In this sense that I entered this year the presidency, only this year, the budget for
this year was prepared by my predecessor. So I Aquino and it binds me because it would last
until mm December. Nowhere in this budget provides enough money to build even two
buildings of rehab structures. It‟s all what is left of my government now after the election is
just enough for the M.O.O.E maintenance at all.
Jamela Alindogan: so you‟re seeing …..
Rodrigo: no capital outlays.
Jamela Alindogan: the budget of President Aquino of this year the last six months doesn‟t
include any rehabilitation.
Rodrigo: because the problem was there but there was nobody minding this story. I was the
only mayor, brave enough to say those things. So my city, mm well, got the benefits of the
peaceful place where you can live, where you can eat, work safely. But the others, we didn‟t
know. But they allow so many administrations said to flourish and it was not until I became a
president. Not between you realize that there were already, according to at the time, of
111
general Santiago of the padilla Philippines Drug Enforcement Agency that there are already
three million addicts. So never mind my counting because I am still counting up to the end of
the year.
Jamela Alindogan: are you in favor of medicine of marijuana?
Rodrigo: yes, but that, that, that doesn‟t really long process. It has to be something like being
officially certified by the Food and Drugs of the Philippines. And, the, it must have this
qualifying a, you know, a, activity where it‟s being used to find out if it‟s really a medicinal
or a something good for body.
Jamela Alindogan: but you‟d considerate, you considerate in the legalization of it for example
Rodrigo: I, I, I am not the authority for that. It is food and drug administration which is that
its work
Jamela Alindogan: ok
Rodrigo: if it is certified by the government. Fine. No problem.
….